The Present State of Peru/2c

by Joseph Skinner

ANTHROPOLOGY.

ACCOUNT OF TWO PERUVIAN GIANTS.

Giants and dwarfs are antipodal nations, the existence of which is still problematical to philosophers and naturalists. The enormous bulk which several voyagers have ascribed to the Patagonians, is as much doubted as the diminutive stature of the Indians who inhabit the mountains of Madagascar. On a survey of the different parts of the globe, it will be found that South America is the country which affords the greatest number of testimonies in favour of the former. The histories which ancient traditions have handed down, relate that, in the primitive ages, a certain race of men, who, from the knee downward, measured as much in length as a man of the highest stature measures in his whole body, landed at the point of St. Helena. The sepulchres discovered on the coasts of Peru, and those of the provinces of Chichas and Tarija, bestow some colour of probability on these narrations. In the cabinet of natural history now forming at Lima^[1], is deposited a tooth (one of the molares, or grinders) of a mummy covered in Tarija, which weighs a pound and a half^[2]: consequently, the mummy from which it was extracted must have possessed a much greater bulk than the skeleton dug up by Habicot, who asserts that it measured in length twenty-five feet and a half^[3]. Perhaps the Patagonians who have been described, and whose stature has been estimated at from nine to thirteen feet, were the descendants of those formidable giants, who, having landed at the point of St. Helena, proceeded to the Magellanic land, propagating their species. For these reasons, it is not inexpedient that we who inhabit the part of the globe which, in preceding ages, was peopled with giants, should exercise our pen in the solution of the problem on their existence. As, however, a subject which has been elucidated by Jaucourt, Sir Hans Sloane, Buffon, Haller, Torrubia, Daubenton, &c. cannot be treated without a sufficient number of new testimonies, to be adduced in support of the ideas and conceptions which require time to be duly weighed and examined, not to deprive our readers, in the interim, of the pleasure afforded by the marvellous, we shall proceed to a description of Basilio Huaylas, of enormous stature, who was brought from the city of lea to Lima, in the month of May 1792, to be exhibited as a spectacle to the inhabitants.

Before, however, we touch on the subject of this giant, whom we have seen, it will not be foreign to our purpose to cite the following extract of a letter from Santa Fé de Bogota, relative to another prodigy of the same description. "His Excellency the Viceroy of this kingdom (New Granada) has embarked for Spain a labourer in the mines, named Pedro Cano, aged twenty-one years, who, until the age of fifteen years, grew moderately, but who has, since that epoch, attained the gigantic stature of seven feet, five inches, three lines and a half, Spanish measure. Such was the poverty of this Indian in his primitive condition, that he had never worn shoes; but on his arrival at Santa Fé, decency required that he should be furnished with a pair, which measured half a yard in length."

To proceed to Basilio Huaylas. This Indian, a native of the province of Castro- Virreyna, aged twenty-four years, is pretty nearly of the same stature with the giant Pedro Cano. His height is seven Castillian feet, two inches, and a few lines. His limbs are out of all due proportion: from the waist upward they are monstrous. The head occupies about one-third; the shoulders have a breadth of five-sixths of an ell; and the arms are so long, that when our giant stands erect, the points of the fingers touch the knees. From the waist downward, the limbs are of smaller proportions. The right leg is an inch shorter than the left; a defect which is said to have arisen from a blow which Huaylas received in his . fancy. In the generality of giants, the bones of the legs do not enlarge in proportion: being unable, on this account, to support the heavy weight of the body, the inferior extremities become crooked and enfeebled^[4]. It was thus that the legs of the giant described by Haller were weak and mis-shapen; and those of our giant come under the same description. Notwithstanding they are, comparatively speaking, small, his feet may be brought in competition with those of Pedro Cano. The total weight of his body is fourteen arrobas and a half, or three hundred and sixty-two pounds.

Basilio Huaylas, the Peruvian giant, is represented in Plate III. As it would be difficult, from the singularity of his proportions, to form any clear judgment of his size, without a figure of comparison, a musician is introduced, holding a harp, as pourtrayed in the original painting from which the subjects are taken.

One of the reasons which have been adduced, to throw doubts on the existence of gigantic nations, is the want of the productions requisite to their support. To each individual an apple would be a cherry, and a melon an apple. It would therefore be necessary that they should possess the revenues of the Emperor Maximinus, whose ordinary meal consisted of forty pounds of meat, as many of bread, and thirty-six bottles of wine; and that the rest of the inhabitants of the earth should be employed in administering to their insatiable appetites, as happened to the countrymen of a certain glutton,

Pl. III.

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Basilio Huaylas, the Peruvian giant.
Pub. Feb. 1. 1805 by Richard Philips 6 New Bridge Street

named Albinus, who devoured, without rising from table, a hundred peaches, ten melons, five hundred figs, and twelve dozen and a half of oysters.

Huaylas is not of this class. He eats moderately, and less than the greater part of the multitude of sensualists who inhabit Lima. It is true, that he is an Indian; and that the Indians are the most frugal people in existence, when they have to maintain themselves. We do not know what would be the result, if he were to be nourished at the expence of others; for in that case the most diminutive Indian has the swallow of a giant.

To what degree of height this name is applicable, has not hitherto been determined: but as it is generally considered by naturalists, that those who rise above six feet are men of a large stature, Basilio Huaylas may augment the number of giants, without the necessity of his attaining the size of Tiphoeus, the son of Juno, who, according to Apollodorus, touched the stars with his head, and with his outstretched arms the east and the west.

1. In the year 1792.
2. The very respectable person who was originally possessed of the above-mentioned tooth, and whose veracity cannot be called in question, has assured us, that the body from which it was extracted, was conveyed, at a great expence, and with infinite care, from Tarija to Cusco, by the Marquis of Valle-Umbroso, who caused it to be shipped for Madrid; but that it was intercepted on the passage by the English, by whom it was conveyed to London. If, perchance, the Peruvian Mercury should reach that Capital, we request to know, through the medium of the Philosophical Transactions, whether the giant thus intercepted wants the tooth in question. Father Francisco Gonzales Laguna possessed a tooth of the same kind, brought from the above province of Tarija, which weighed more than five pounds, notwithstanding several portions of the fangs had been broken off. It was sent to the cabinet of Madrid.

   As the spots of South America in which these relics are found are level grounds, and as they have not hitherto been discovered in the more elevated and mountainous parts of Peru, the opinion of Haller, that those who inhabit the plains are of larger stature than those by whom the mountains are peopled, seems to be confirmed. It may be urged, however, that these are not the remains of rational, but of irrational creatures, not terrestrial, there being no records of any such, of enormous bulk, before the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards, but marine, as they were left by the universal deluge. Consenting, in the first instance, to this opinion, wc shall proceed to ask, why these skeletons arc not found in the deep cavities of the mountainous territory, where it is more natural to suppose that the bodies would have been deposited, to perish and decay, on the retirement of the waters?

3. Daubenton, in controverting the relation of Habicot, principally founds his objedlions on the disproportion of the limbs of the giant described by the latter. For instance, to a height of twenty-five feet and a half, he allows a breadth of ten feet to the shoulders. "An unheard-of disproportion," observes Daubenton: "a human skeleton of five feet in height, has not a breadth of more than thirteen inches; . consequently a skeleton of twenty-five feet ought not to have, at the shoulders, a breadth of more than five feet, three inches. Now, a breadth of ten feet supposes a giant fifty feet in height." We shall not undertake to justify Habicot's relation; but it appears to us, that the argument which is opposed to him has little or no weight. In giants, as well as in dwarfs, that skilful and beautiful symmetry which Nature displays in the rest of her works, is not to be sought. They are varieties, or, it may be said, monstrous productions, which deviate from the natural order; and it would be therefore unreasonable to deny the existence of men of a very gigantic stature, because they do not observe a proportion in their limbs. If the mode of reasoning adopted by Daubenton were to be followed, it might likewise be said that the relation of Basilio Huaylas, in this article, is not founded in truth, on this account, that the three feet, or nearly, given to the breadth of his shoulders, do not correspond with seven feet in height, but rather with twelve. Again, if the measures were to be deduced from his hands and fingers, he would scarcely be allowed a height of from five to five feet and a half, since neither does the palm of the hand correspond with the length of the arm, nor still less the fingers, which, although thick, are very short.
4. According to the calculation of Muschenbroeck, it is necessary that the growth of the bones of a giant should be in a duplex ratio to the excess they have in length, to preserve the same degree of force. See the introduction to the Natural History of Man, by Daubenton.