DISCOURSE

civilized men and books, there has never been an agreement on the existence of Giants; it is especially in relation to the Patagonians The "Patagonians" were a mythical race of giants first reported by Magellan; the name likely derives from "Patagón," a dog-headed monster from a Spanish romance novel. that this problem has long seemed insoluble to Philosophers. For a hundred years, Navigators of all Nations agreed in saying that the tip of South America produced Colossi; in the following century, Sailors saw nothing there but ordinary men; and Naturalists, from the depths of their studies, asserted today that the Patagonians, as neighbors of the Pole, ought to be nothing but pygmies.

This most curious question now appears decided by the authentic account of Commodore Byron John Byron (1723–1786), a British naval officer whose 1764 voyage sparked renewed rumors of nine-foot-tall giants in Patagonia., and by those which one will read

PRELIMINARY

will read following the Voyage of Dom Pernetty Antoine-Joseph Pernetty (1716–1801), a Benedictine monk and naturalist who accompanied Bougainville to the Falkland Islands.: but to satisfy all classes of men who reason, here are other proofs which will serve to justify nature against the narrow ideas of its detractors; if after this, says the celebrated Fontenelle Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757), a French writer known for making scientific concepts accessible., Father Baltus Jean-François Baltus (1667–1743), a Jesuit theologian who argued that pagan oracles were the work of demons. wishes to still believe that the devil delivers oracles, it will be up to him.

From time immemorial, it has been believed in America that there is in its Southern part a race of Giants, formidable for their violence and for their crimes (1): for in

(1) See especially the History of Peru by the Inca Garcilaso Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), a chronicler of mixed Spanish and Inca descent., book 9, chapter 9. I know that many fables are found in his account: for example, he says that these Giants had eyes as wide as the bottom of a plate; that each of them ate as much as fifty men; that they killed the women whom they...

Volume I. C