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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
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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
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