The reader is now in possession of all the statements from which we are to decide the much-disputed question whether, in the time of Magellan, Patagonia was a land of giants. He is to remember that Pigafetta, who was the friend and fellow-voyager of the giant Paul, one of the two captives, does not in other instances go out of his way to invent the marvellous, though he often does repeat marvellous stories which have been related by others. It is to be observed that none of the voyagers pretend to have seen any large number of Patagonians. The largest number seen at one time was nine; and even if these were different from the six who came to the ship, fifteen is the largest number of the native visitors to the squadron. Of these, according to one account, in which three at least of the authorities agree, two are of extraordinary height, so that the heads of the Spaniards reached only to their girdles. It is also said that the feet or shoes of all were large, “but not disproportionate to their stature.” For three hundred years, on this testimony, it was perhaps generally believed that the Patagonians were very large men. The statement was positively made that they were nine feet high. But as other voyagers, especially in this century, more and more often brought home accounts in which no such giants appeared, there was an increasing distrust of the original Spanish narrative.
Especially when navigators had to do with the wretched Kemenettes and Karaikes of the Straits, who are a tribe of really insignificant stature, was indignation liberally bestowed on the old traveller’s story; and when, in 1837, the original narrative of the Genoese pilot was brought to light by Navarrete,—a simple and unexaggerated story; when it proved that he made no allusion whatever to any persons of remarkable height,—the whole giant story was declared to be an invention of Pigafetta, and the gigantic size of the Patagonians was denounced as a mere traveller’s fable. Such criticism probably goes too far.
The simple facts may be taken, and the hasty inference may be disregarded. Every travelling showman will testify to the fact that there occasionally appear men, even under the restrictions of civilization, who are so tall that the Spaniards, not of a large race, would only come to their girdles.[1599] If Pigafetta is to be believed, two such men came to Magellan’s squadron. Tall men came to Cook’s squadron at Honolulu, a hundred years ago, who were quite above the average of his men.
GIANT’S SKELETON AT PORTO DESIRE.
[Fac-simile of a part of the cut of Porto Desire (no. 22) in Lemaire’s Speculum orientalis occidentalisque, etc., 1599.—Ed.]
Magellan supposed that these were typical men, that they were specimens of their race. Because he supposed so he captured them and tried to carry them to Spain. Magellan was mistaken. They were not specimens of their race; they were extraordinary exceptions to it. But the ready tribe of geographers, eager to accept marvels from the New World, at once formed the conclusion that because these two were so large, all Patagonians would prove to be so.
Pigafetta drew no such inference, nor is there any evidence that the Spaniards ever did. On the other hand, six Spaniards, with their knives, closed fearlessly on nine of these men, and routed them in a hand-to-hand fight. We may fairly conclude that the delusion which modern criticism has dispelled was not intentionally called into being by the navigators, but was rather the deduction drawn from too narrow premises by credulous Europe.[1600]
The next voyagers who saw these people were Drake’s party. Fletcher, writing in the World Encompassed, after fifty-eight years, says distinctly in his narrative of Drake’s arrival at this same Port Julian: “We had no sooner landed than two young giants repaired to them.” Again, speaking of the same interview, “he was visited by two of the inhabitants, whom Magellan named Patagous, or rather Pentagours, from their huge stature.” And afterward he resumes the matter in these words: “Magellane was not altogether deceived in naming them giants, for they generally differ from the common sort of men both in stature, bigness, and strength of body, as also in the hideousness of their voice. But yet they are nothing so monstrous or giant-like as they are reported, there being some Englishmen as tall as the highest of any we could see. But peradventure the Spaniards did not think that ever any Englishman would come thither to reprove them, and thereupon might presume the more boldly to lie,—the name Pentagones, five cubits, viz. seven foot and half, describing the full height (if not somewhat more) of the highest of them.”