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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (July 25, 1901)
" " ' ' ' Jpf 10 tTbc Conservative * ABOUT GIANTS. BY LAWRENCE IllWELL. Priniitivo traditions are ns full of no- counts of men of enormous stature ns they are of dwarfs. The poets , and some of the historians of antiquity , lend us to suppose that the human race did not begin to deteriorate until the time of Homer. There is not , however , any proof that races of men of gigantic size ever existed at all , although sculptures are preserved which represent combats between men and giants. One of these may be seen in the British museum , and others are to bo found in the few Greek temples which have escaped destruction. Pliny says that upon the occasion of a terrible earthquake An Italy , a fissure opened , revealing the skeleton of a man embedded upright in the earth , measur ing about twenty-six feet in height. Plutarch goes further , for he declares that a skeleton was found by Sertorius at Tangier , in Mauritanis , ( Morocco ) , which measured about forty feet ! Phlegon , of Lydia , in his "Treatise on Wonders , " says that there were dis covered in Africa a vast number of skeletons between twelve and fifteen feet in height. The information afforded by the Bible is scanty. The height of Og , king of Bashan , is not given ; we are merely told that his bedstead was "of iron , nine cubits ( about thirteen and one-half feet ) long , and four cubits broad. ' ' Josephus , however , says that the length of this re markable bed was four cubits and a span about eight feet , nine inches. Cer tain tall races referred to in Scripture unquestionably contained men "of lofty stature ; " and the report of the great height of the Anakim terrified the Israel ites in the time of Moses ; but in the time of Joshua , the Anakim were almost "extinguished as a people" by the Israel ites. There is no proof whatever that this tribe was of superhuman height. Patagonian Giants. The traveler Magellan records in his travels , written in 1520 , that in latitude 84 , near the mouth of the Plata river , he met with a gigantic tribe of Patagonians. He says that he measured many of them , and that they exceeded seven feet in height. Whether Magellan's measure ments were wrong , or whether these people are degenerating , I cannot say ; but it is certain that , at the present time , an average Patagoniau measures about five feet , ten inches , and that there is no reliable evidence that any man of this nation ever exceeded six feet , four inches. Nobody doubts , of course , that the Patagonians , taken as a whole , are a very tall people. At all times and in all countries , prior to the eighteenth century , kings and nobles had a fancy for including among their retainers either a giant or a dwarf and sometimes both. Frederick the * wR Great had his corps of gigantic grena diers ; and in the Tower of London maybe bo seen some enormous armor of six teenth century work , which must have belonged to men of great size. James I had attached to his person a porter named Parsons , commonly called "the Staffordshire giant , " who had com menced life as a blacksmith ; he meas ured so report says seven feet , seven inches. Parsons lived on into the reign of Charles I , and was two inches taller than his predecessor. Cromwell's Giant Valet. Cromwell had a valet named Daniel , who was seven feet , six inches tall , but of weak intellect. He , unfortunately , ended his days in a lunatic asylum , hav ing become possessed with the idea that he had been sent on the earth to prophesy coming events. Contemporary with Daniel , lived Anthony Pnyne , a Cornish farmer. He was as remarkable for his wit as for his strength and stature , which exceeded seven feet. I understand that the English counties of Cornwall and Yorkshire have been famous for their big men for many generations past , al though talluess is not specially notice able today among the inhabitants of the cities. After a long , military career in the Stuart service , Payne died at a good old age. In 1686 , two negroes of very great great stature were exhibited in England. They were said to be the sons of the kings of two African tribes , and were captured by slave-dealers , who brought them to Europe. One was called Giolo , and he was supposed to be the son of the king of the Moangi tribe. The other was known as "the Black Prince , " and became converted to Christianity. He was taken care of by a Nottinghamshire family , who christened him Joseph. His height is believed to have been seven feet. feet.Giants Giants are seldom gifted with any more beauty than their opposites in the world , and they are generally more re markable for their awkwardness and their stolid appearance than for any natural grace or intellectual qualities. There was , however , an exception to this general rule in a person named Max- imilliaii Mailer , a German giant , who traveled about Europe in the reign of the English king , George II. The ac counts describe him as being a man of splendid build and noble proportions , with a handsome and striking counte nance. He measured seven feet , eight inches. His hand was twelve inches long from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. He died in 1785 , at the age of sixty , not long after Hogarth had introduced his portrait into his famous picture of "Southwark Fair. " The Habitat of the Giant. It is a curious fact that the population of France has rarely produced a giant , while Germany , Poland , Great Britain and Switzerland carry off the palm. The United States , while not famous for giants , has produced one of the tallest and one of the heaviest men of whom we have an authentic account. Miles Dar- den was born in North Carolina in 1798 , and ho lived until 1857. Ho was seven feet , six inches in height , and in 1845 weighed 871 pounds. At his death , his weight was a little over a thousand pounds. Until 1858 , ho was active and able to work , but after that time he was obliged to stay at home , or to be taken about in a two-horse wagon. His coffin was eight feet long , thirty-five inches deep and thirty-two inches across the breast. It has been suggested that the preva lence in France of a vegetarian diet , which , it is said , does not tend to develop to so great an extent the growth of muscle as does the stronger diet of meat , may explain the apparent absence of giants. But if this were the correct hypothesis as to the cause of giantism , then men and women of great height ought to be very numerous , both here and in England. Scientific opinion , however , seems to regard enormous size as a diseased condition , and the corpses of many giants have , upon dis section , been found to possess an ab normal brain characteristic. The curi ous body found at the root of the nose , known as the hypophysis , or pituitary , is enlarged to such a degree that it must be regarded as evidence that the deceased was a victim of the terrible disease called acromegaly. The normal function of the hypophysis is not known. The eighteenth century , to judge by its literature , seems to have been more than usually prolific of giants , both male and female. Horace Walpole mentions a giant and giantess , who were on view in London. They were both , it seems , well-proportioned persons , and without the usual awkward ungainliness - ness of their fraternity if that term is permissible. At this time , also , there appeared a young Italian giantess , seven feet in height , who is reported to have been the admiration of most of the crowned heads of Europe. Her appear ance was followed , about 1740 , by Cajanus , the Swedish giant , commonly known as "the living Colossus , " who attracted a great amount of attention all over the old world. He was the son of a minister of a little village in Finland. The minister and his wife were normal individuals , but their son stood eight feet , four inches without his shoes. In 1755 , Bernardo Gogli came to the front. He measured eight feet in height , and the extraordinary proportion of his limbs seems to have been a veritable gold mine to him. Ireland's Celebrities. But no giant ever created quite as much sensation as Charles Byrne , "the Irish monster , " who lived from 1761 to * &