A mere four
hundred years ago, some of the great explorers of the world
– history book names – came face to face with giants
in old Patagonia. During the two thousand years before the Christian
era, the vast lands of the Americas were inhabited by tribes
of giants, much the same as those of the Middle East. As did
their biblical brethren, the mighty men of America dwindled
slowly away, the survivors moving ever southwards until reaching
their last home, the southern tip of Argentina. It was here,
as the first tentative exploration of the New World began, that
Europeans encountered the few that were left.
Magellan
The first
of these chronicled sightings occurred in 1520, when the famous
Portuguese explorer Magellan anchored his ships in the harbour
of San Julian. On going ashore, he and his crew were startled
to encounter a giant of a man, nearly ten feet tall and with,
so they related, a voice like a bull. Enquiries soon, ascertained
that he was not alone, but belonged to a tribe of giants who
lived nearby.
Thoroughly
intrigued, Magellan and his men captured two specimens, intending
to take them back to Europe. He shipped them aboard and set
sail, but they died before the return journey was halfway completed.
Sir Francis Drake, who passed through San Julian in 1578, mentions
that he saw two men who stood nine feet tall, and in the years
that followed similar reports were made by adventurers whose
names may not be quite so familiar. Pedro Sarmiento, Tome Hernandez,
Anthony Knyvet and Sebald de Weert all claim to have laid eyes
on the South American giants. In 1615, two more travellers,
Jacob le Maire and Wilhelm Schouten, recorded the fact that
they had discovered a pair of human skeletons, each nine feet
in length.
By 1700,
the giants seemed to have moved away from San Julian, and the
next official record places them at Valdivia, Chile. In 1712,
the Spanish authorities there filed repeated reports of a race
of giants living in the wild interior, not many miles from the
town. The last sighting seems to have taken place in 1764, when
Commodore Byron, grandfather of famous poet, saw them at Cabo
Virgines.
From Giants
- The Vanquished Race of Mighty Men by Roy Norvill
