The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-14
PATAGONlAN GIANTS.
HOW THE EARLT NAVIGAToRS
 ROMANCED
About Them ana .hs Dwarf. of TIsrra
 Dsrfusgo-wha, They are Now.

the giants of Patagonia, and of the dwarfs who live just across the narrow channel on the Islands of Tierra del Fuego? So much nonsense has been written and told about these people, ever since the first white man found them Gin the year 152O), that to this day the world possesses few actual facts concerning them. You remember how Don Pigfetta, the champion liar of Magellan's expedition, describes the Patagonians as ".of that biggenesse that our manne Of meane stature could reach up to their waystes;" and all the early explorers who felt bound to see and describe as amazing things as their predecessors had done, while few of them went even farther in thir laudible ffeorts to keep up European interests in the new world.
 Regarding the stature of these giants, here is an amusing discrepancy in the statements of celebrated travellers, an- cient and modern. Sir Francis Drake. who came here in 157S, testified that the Patagonians were mot taller than many Englishmen. Schouten, the German explorer, declared them to be Living skeletons, ten or eleven feet long" D 'Orbigny, the French scientist, wrote in 1929 that he never found any ex- ceeding five feet eleven inches" Fitz- roy and Darwin computed their average height to be six feet; and Cunningham, who made them careful study not many years ago. says he found one chief who measured six inches. Cap tain Mayne Reid, whose delightful book called Odd People" stands next to
 Robinson Crusoe" in the estimation of millions of boys, wrote these words about the Patagonians: They have been measured! Twelve-foot giants can no longer be found. They never existed, except in the fertile magina- tions of the old navigators, whose en- bodied testimony, nevertheless, it is difficult to disbelieve. Other and more reliable witnesses have done away with the Tftans; but still we are unable to reduce the stature of the Patagonian to that of ordinary men. If not actual gi- ants, they are very tall, many of them standing seven feet in their boots of guanca leather, few less than six feet, and like few rising nearly to eight. These measurements are definate and certain; therefore, irf not positive gi- ants, it is safe to consider the Patago- nians as among the tallest of human beings, perhaps the very tallest that. ex- ist or ever existed upon the face of the earth" One of the most vivid scenes in memory's picture gallery-one that still stands out distinct and clear, amid a multitude of misty shapes and half obliterated facts of far greater inpor- tance-is that of a missionary lecture, on a long-ago Sunday afternoon, when the speaker impressively said: The poor giants of Patagonia, though nearly twice as tall as anybody in this church, if not in this country,-say from nine to twelve feet high-have neither minds nor hearts in proportion to their bodies. They are among the most fierce and de- graded people on earth; they are canni- bals, who feast on the bodies of their enemies, and on ship-wrecked sailors and other foreigners who happen to fall into their hands At other times they subsist on raw fish. But when the streams are frozen, as they are during a greater part of the year, and no fish are to be had, they eat all the old wo- men of the tribe; next they devour their horses, if need be; and lastly, but only to save themselves from starvation, sacrifice their beloved dogs to the cook ing-pot. The people of Tierra del Fuego are even more ugly, being dwarfs, not more than three or four feet tall, with enormously swollen bodies, large heads, short and rocked limbs. They file their
 front teeth sharp like those of dog, and devour their food raw; and though | they live in climate so cold that water freezes every night in the year, they build no houses and wear no clothes whatever
 May heaven forbid the reverend gen. tleman his ignorance, for I don't be- llieve he deliberately slandered the heathens. He merely gave us the com monly accepted opinion in Europe and
 America, gleaned. undoubtedly, from
 some standard Ercyclopaedia of Uni-
 versal Knowledge; but at any rate, our youthful imaginations were so excited land generous pity aroused, that every tin bank belonging to every child in the Sunday school was ruthlessly broken and all our hoarded pennies dispatched
 to the poor Patagonians through the pockets of the missionary.
 As you may imagine, that which in- terests us most just now in Punta Are mas are the Patagorian Indians, parties of whom struggle in almost every day
 at this season of the year to exchange l their guanaco furs and ostrich feathers for provisions and the worthless trim
 kets that delight their souls. The "gi-
 ants seem be all dead and the race far gone in it's decadence It is the ole
 story. pitifuliy true wherever the red man has adopted the white on peacea-
 ble terms as his near neighbor, that whiskey and disease soon make sac
 havoc among the former. The once
 sturdy Patagonian, like his cousin IT North America, seems to have acquired
 all the vices of civilization while omit. ing it's virtues. his highest ambition be.
 ing to get enough to eat drink ant ,smoke with the least possible labor | He hangs around the ranches, to picl
 up what is thrown to himself and tht
 dogs in the line of food, and depends
 upon stealing and begging for whiskey
 and tobacco
 It should be remembered, however that there are several distinct nation. lof Patagonians, not including the Arau caDians on the north, nor the F'lea,