The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-01-22
Giants.


The body of Orestes, according to the
Greeks, was eleven feet and half the
giant Galbara, brought from Arabia to
Rome under Claudius Caesar, was near
ten feet and the bones of Secondilla
and Pufo, keepers of the gardens of
Sallust, were but six inches shorter.
Funnam, Scotchman, who lived in
the time of Eugene the Second, King
of Scotland, measured eleven feet and a
half and Jacob le Marie, in his voy-
age to the Straits of Magellan, reports
that on the 18th of December, 1915,
they found at Port Desire several
graves covered with stones and hav.
ing the curiosity to remove the stones,
they discovered human skeletons of ten
and eleven feet long.
The Chevalier Scory in his voyage to
the peak of Tenerife, says that they
found in one Of the sepulchral caverns
of that mountain, the head of q Gaun-
che, which had eighty teeth, and that
the body was not less than fifteen feet
long.
The giant Ferragus, slain by Orlando,
nephew of Charlemagne, was eighteen
feet high.
Roland, celebrated anatomist, who
wrote in 1914, says that, some years
before, there was to be seen in the
suburbs of st. German, the tomb of
the giant Isoret, who was twenty feet
high.
In Rouen, in 1909, in digging in the
bitches near the Dominicans, they
found stone tomb containing skele-
ton. whose skull held bHshel of corn,
and whose shin bone reached up to the
girdle of the tallest man there, being
about four feet long, and consequently
the body must have been seventeen or
eighteen feet high. Upon the tomb
was plate of copper, whereon was en-
graved, "In this tomb lies the noble
and puissant lord, the Chevalier Ricon
de Vallemont, and his bones" Plate
rus, famous physician, declares that
he saw at Lucerne the true human
bones of a subject which must have
been at least nineteen feet high.
Valence in Dauphine boasts of pos
sessing the bones of the giant Bucart,
tyrant of the Vivarais, who was slain
by an arrow by the Count de Cabillon,
his vassal. The Dominicans had a
part of the shin-bone, with the articula-
tion of the knee, and his figure painted
in fresco, with an inscription showing
that this giant was twenty-five feet and
half high, and that his bones were
found in 1705 near the banks of the
Morderi, a little river at the foot of the
mountain of Crussol, upon which, tradi-
ton says, the giant dwelt.
January II, 1913, some masons dig.
ging near the ruins of q castle in
Dauphine, in field which by tradition
had long been called the Giants Field,
at the depth of eighteen feet discovered
brick tomb thirty feet long, twelve
feet wide, and eight feet high, or
which was a gray stone, with the words
Theutobochus Rex cut thereon. When
the tomb was opened they found Q
human skeleton entire-twenty-f five feet
and half long, ten feet wide across the
shoulders, and five feet deep from the
were about the size each of an ox's
foot, and his shin-bone measured foul
feet.
Near Mezarino, in Sicily, in 1916
was found a giant thirty feet high his
head was the size of hogshead, and
each of his teeth weighed five ounces.
Near Palermo, in the valley of MAJ
ara, in Sicily, skeleton of a giant
thirty feet long was found in the yeal
1913, and another of thirty-th three feet
high in 1850; and many curious per-
sons have preserved several of these
gigantic bones.
The Athenians found near their city
two famous skeletons, one of thirty
four and the other of thirty-six. fee
high.
At Totu, in Bohemia, in 75S, was
found skeleton, the head of which
could scarce be encompassed by the
arms of two men together, and whose
legs, which they still keep in the castle
of that city, were twenty-six feet long.
The skull of the giant found in Mace
donia, September, 1851, held 21(
pounds of corn.
The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane, who
treated this matter very learnedly, does
not doubt these facts, but thinks th'
bones were those of elephants, whales
or other enormous animals.
Elephants bones may be shown fo
those of giants, but they never can i'm
pose on connoisseurs.
Whales, which by their immense bull
are more proper to be substituted fo
the largest giants, have neither arms o
legs and the head of that animal ha
not the least resemblance to that of {
man. If it be true, that great nun
ber of the gigantic bones which we hav
mentioned have been seen by anato
mists, and have by them been reputeC
real human bones, the existence o
giants is proved.