Princeton University - Department of English

Professor: Jonathan Lamb

Preceptor: Laura Sayre

ENG 321

Travel in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Prose Narrative

The Patagonian Giants

Introduction

When Commodore Byron, leader of the first of the four expeditions mounted by the British in the 1760s to explore the Pacific Ocean, reported that he had landed at the Rio Gallego, near Cape Fairweather on the southern tip of South America (Friday, 21 December 1764), and discovered people of an enormous size, he put fresh life into a controversy as old the Magellanic navigations. Magellan claimed to have found giants on the coast of Patagonia (literally the place of big feet), an achievement sung in prophetic vein in the tenth of Camoens' Lusiads: 'Rather more than half-way from equator to South Pole he will come on a land, Patagonia, where the inhabitants are of almost gigantic stature; then, farther on, he will discover the strait that now bears his name, which leads to another sea and another land, that Terra Incognita' (Camoens 246). Drake's experiences in the same place, as reported by John Winter and then published by Hakluyt, failed to authenticate Magellan, being limited to meetings with people 'of a mean stature' (Hakluyt 3.751). But Purchas restored giants to Patagonia in order (James Boon suggests) to preserve lurid associations of giantism, sodomy and devil worship with the Spanish imperium (Boon, 37-38). Despite Narborough's decisive rejection of the evidence for Patagonian giants after his expedition in 1670, there were surprising recurrences to Magellan's opinion. Among the buccaneers Amedee Frezier, highly respected as a navigator, mentions a tribe of Indians in southern Chile called Caucabues, said to stand 'near four Yards high, that is about nine or ten Foot', who frequently migrate to the east coast (Frezier 84). He cites French and Dutch accounts,and concludes, 'What I have here deliver'd upon the Testimony of Persons of Credit, is so agreeable to what we read in the Relations of the most famous Travelers, that I am of Opinion, it may be believ'd, without the Guilt of an Over-Credulity, that there is in that Part of America, a Nation of Men much exceeding us in Stature' (85). William Cowley, an associate of William Dampier, finds giants as far west as the Ladrones group, where he comes across huge human bones, 'the Legg bone being three foote and two Inches long, the Anckle Bones about foure Inches and three-quarters Circumferance' (Cowley 26v).

After the 1740s, when the South Seas ceased to be the exclusive domain of freebooters and privateers, and became the object of British and French naval ambitions and scientific research, it might be expected that no more would be heard of giants in Patagonia. However, John Bulkeley, who sailed with Anson into the South Seas, reports Indians in southern Chile 'of a gigantick Stature' (Bulkeley), despite the elaborate sarcasms heaped by his colleague, Pascoe Thomas, on Spanish lies concerning the feats of these 'wild and gigantick Cannibals' who are in fact'a harmless, civil, inoffensive People; of a middling Stature, well-shap'd, and of a tawny olive Complexion' (Thomas, 125-26). It was on the same expedition that John Byron sailed as a midshipman, sharing the hideous privations that descended on the crew of the Wager when she was wrecked on the South Chilean coast. His account includes detailed descriptions of Indians of the common size, but no mention of giants. His second entry into these seas, twenty years later, is marked by a strange mirage that seems to advertise a certain unreliability of vision: 'I looked forward under the foresail, and upon the lee bow, and saw what at first appeared to be an island, rising in two craggy hills, but upon looking to leeward I saw land joining to it, and running a long way to the south east. . . . I sent officers to the mast-head . . . and they called out that they saw land also a great way to the windward . . . and now many of the people said that they saw the sea break upon the sandy beaches' (Hawkesworth 1.10). But it proves to be a rack of low cloud that simply vanishes, leaving him to reflect, 'Though I have been almost continually at sea for seven and twenty years, I had never seen such a deception before.' Whatever the reason for the subsequent deception, whether it was owing to the bulky cloaks of the inhabitants, or the fact that they were chiefly seen while sitting down, or, as Bougainville speculated when he saw no Patagonian standing above five feet and ten inches, their immensely broad shoulders and their large heads which caused them to appear like Titans (Bougainville, 146-47), Byron was convinced that the Indians of Patagonia were of a preternatural size, 'of a gigantic stature [that] seemed to realize the tales of monsters in a human shape' (Hawkesworth 28).

This eyewitness account, like so many others in these voyages of exploration that the Admiralty had ordered into a compilation, put John Hawkesworth, the hapless compiler, on his mettle. Overcoming what must have been his initial scepticism about these colossi, he set himself to give a spirited paraphrase of Byron's journal (and one rather too free with what remained of its facts, according to Helen Wallis); but in his preface he considers the question at large, concluding with a long quotation from the French historiographer Charles de Brosses that chimes with Frezier's estimate: '"That men have a strange propensity to the marvelous cannot be denied, nor that fear naturally magnifies its object; but . . . it is certain, that all who have affirmed their stature to be gigantic, were not under the influence of fear; and it is very strange, that nations who have an hereditary hatred to each other . . . should agree in in asserting an evident falsehood'" (Hawkesworth 1.ix). No matter how Hawkesworth chose to balance the account, it was bound to provoke a scandal. It broke duly in the learned worlds of Britain and Europe (see Boon, Diderot and Wallis) and probably contributed to the anxieties and resentments that hurried Hawkesworth to an early death the year after the publication of his Account. In 1768, however, another embattled compiler, Tobias Smollett, is propagating the same opinion. In the section devoted to Terra-Magellanica, or Patagonia in his Present State of all Nations, he writes, 'Patagonia is inhabited by a variety of Indian tribes, as the Patagons, from which the country takes its name . . . of whom we know very little; only it appears, from the accounts of former voyages, lately confirmed by commodore Byron and his crew, that some of them are of a gigantic stature, and cloathed with skins' (Smollett, 8.441). James King, who had the responsibility of editing and publishing the journal of Cook's final voyage, is equally positive that the fact of Patagonian giants, 'whose stature considerably exceeds that of the bulk of mankind, will no longer be doubted or disbelieved' (Cook and King 1.lxxi).

The extract which follows is taken from an unnumbered insertion, twenty-six pages long, placed between pages twenty-five and twenty-six of the British Library's copy of the anonymous Journal of a Voyage round the World in the Dolphin (London: M. Cooper, 1767). The author is in the middle of what seems to be a perfectly serious authentication of Magellan's original report ('Those Indians were about ten feet high, straight and well made, broad set, and of a prodigious strength. They ride upon horses about fifteen feet high') when he is interrupted by this description of a giants' Utopia. Its author uses this account of the second voyage of Byron as the vehicle of a fantasy of impermeable political and civic virtue, rather as Swift uses the second voyage of Gulliver to Brobdingnag to inflate the politics of his disgraced friend Viscount Bolingbroke into an ideal commonwealth. In both cases, the land of giants represents a polity founded on patriot, or country party, principles--no standing army, a strong yeomanry, an incorruptible patrician class, a strict sense of propriety in all things--in stark contrast to the corrupt state of Britain, where honour is for sale. Nevertheless, like the Brobdingnagians, the Patagonians are not (as Horace Walpole puts it in his own Patagonian satire) 'an uninterrupted generation of Patriots' (Walpole 200). Their utopia has a history of difficulties, finally happily surmounted, but severe enough to prevent them from enjoying unreflectively the benefits of the state of nature outlined by Rousseau in the Essay on the Origin of Languages and the Second Discourse. Hence a rather long section devoted to improvements in the law in the Patagonian state, where the author expands on questions of equity, of written versus unwritten law, and of exemplary punishment--topics currently being debated by penal reformers such as Beccaria, Paley, Fielding, Madan and Romilly. Their distance from a primordial innocence prevents the Patagonians from embodying the ideals of primitive life attempted by Diderot in his Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, where Bougainville's unfallen world of Tahiti sets the pattern for so many representations of South Pacific culture as a paradise. At the same time, the author is careful not to ascribe their development of civil society to the ameliorative effect of commerce; for they have no traffic with other nations, and observe too strict a standard of propriety to desire what they cannot supply themselves. This reflective margin, while it excludes almost entirely any of ethnographical detail that Montaigne or Diderot command in their descriptions of savage cultures, makes room for the ethnographical inversion Swift is so fond of, namely the presentation of European discoverers as the object of discovery, the wonder of those they came to wonder at. In Patagonian comedies, the figure of European size plays the part of the dwarf who knows nothing and who can accomplish nothing, a woman's plaything whose innocence arises solely from his helplessness, just as Gulliver is forced to recognise his impotence, despite his resentful talk of guns and warfare, in having nothing bigger than toys and children to command. The reference to Chiron, the centaur-teacher of Jason and Achilles, gives an added twist to this inversion. As the Patagonians to the Europeans, so the intelligent horses of Swift's fourth book to their slaves the Yahoos, whose savage descent from European castaways invites the reader to view Europe as the New World, a place of astonishingly limitless violence, and the New World of the Pacific as its antithesis, a realm of ancient and self-conscious civility.

The choice of the Pacific as a setting for Utopian fictions has a long history. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros discovered what he understood to be the tip of the Great Southern Continent, Terra Australis Incognita, when he landed at the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, in 1606 (Beaglehole xlviii-ix); and thereafter sailors and cartographers were on the lookout for this fabulous region of gold, pearl and precious stones. The secret instructions of Cook's first voyage ordered him to find and map this mysterious landmass, the same that Byron thought he had encountered on his first entrance into the South Seas when he mistook a fogbank for an immense coastline. Meanwhile it fed the imaginations of writers of utopias, such as Gabriel de Foigny, whose La Terre Australe Connue (1676) describes a utopic commonwealth among the Australians, a nation of hermaphrodites with four arms, rather like the creatures described by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, who hold goods in common and are strangers to greed, ambition and lust (see Fausett 1993: xi-l). The Hairy Giants (1671), an anonymous fantasy written under the pseudonym of Henry Schooten, describes a land of giants living on an island to the west of Patagonia, meek and unspoilt by the abundant gold and silver their mines afford and, as Schooten says, capable of being instructed both in religion and traffic (Fausett 1993a: 91-97). Another Patagonian Utopia, James Burgh's An Account of the Cessares (1764), comes closest to the spirit of the anonymous insertion in the Journal of a Voyage, which it predates only by four years.

Between them, Byron's journal, his antagonist's satire and Swift's Gulliver's Travels reopen the questions surrounding traveller's tales on the very eve of Cook's great cartographical, astronomical and taxonomical achievements in the Pacific. Do you see giants because you have a dream of a different order of politics, diabolic or patriotic as the case may be; or because the eye that sees things for the first time, and the I that testifies to their truth, is disturbed by the novelty of its situation? Or is it that ethnological fantasy, with its nightmares of monstrous and its dreams of perfect government, has always been the norm of such narratives, as Herodotus and Pliny, and Lucian and Rabelais, show in their different ways? No-one seems to have ventured into the Pacific without a book to steer by--Bligh had Hawkesworth, Cook had Dampier, and Anson used Cowley--so that many of the marvels recorded may be, like Magellan's Patagonians, rewritings of what was already written down. On the other hand, Byron published an account of his miseries as a midshipman on the Wager twenty years after the event, and a year after this satire appeared, perhaps to vindicate, and at least to plead for, the loneliness of the first person narrator at a time when the probability of his testimony was under attack. In his preface he wrote, 'The greatest pain I feel in committing the following sheets to the press, arises from an apprehension that many of my readers will accuse me of egotism' (Byron v). This imputed self-absorption is one of the burdens borne by the traveller who has seen wonders that no-one wishes to believe.

The Patagonian Giants

A Patagonian is not fabricated as a man of London or Paris, of five feet high; he does not approach his mistress with corrupted manners, a weakened consitution, and a body hurt by excess and debauchery, but with a virtuous behaviour, a good constitution, and noble sentiments.

While a female Patagonian is with child, all disagreeable objects are ketp from her; she is awakened by musick; they study to divert her with amusements most suitable to her taste; her mind is brightened with joy, without allowing her to grow slothful for want of action, she has exercise, such as walking or such husbandry work, as is most agreeable to her. The Patagonians do not doubt the mother's influence over both the physical and moral constitution of the child, as a sound strong tree produces large fruit. When a young Patagonian is born, it is suckled by its mother: it is the opinion of that country, that no other person can perform that sacred office of nature properly, which is equally for the good of both mother and child. The people of that nation do not chuse to have their children weak, lame, crooked-legg'd, or rickety; if any family among them, like a sickly nursery, should be unshapely, and not grow, it would be forced to look for shelter in the desart, where it might likely form a pooor rack of weak savages of five feet.

They are very careful not to stop the circulation of the blood, and humours, or the motion of the limbs of their children, they don;t swaddle them: they learned this lesson from the brutes; the healthy baby is left free like a puppy, scrabbles about a room covered with matts, where nothing can hurt it; it has no other cradle, and soon springs forward to meet the nipple from which it is nourished, and fastens itself to it, by handing upon its mother with its knees and feet about her waste: they mother does not leave her employment while the child sucks, nor gives it any assistance with her hands; in the same manner it scrabbles after any thing that is thrown on the matt to it: as soon as it gets upon its feet, it is led twenty times a day to a meadow, where it has pure air, and may run and tumble about without harm; they don;t use leading-strings, nor put on them pads or puddings to prevent them from being hurt by a fall; as they are human creatures, the parent chuses they should learn to suffer, and from experience prevent accidents for the future: they heads are never covered, and that exposure hardens the skull, and prevents humours and defluxions, and guards it against bruises; they are also accustomed to go bare footed, as they have not always time to put on their shoes and stockings, as in cases of fire, for fear they should be burnt in their turn, and they can stand firmer on a steep place on their own skin, than the tann'd and slippery hides of beasts; the rest of their bodies are thinly and lossely covered; they wear no garters; they are accustomed to bear the head of the sun by degrees, also excessive cold, and wetting rains: from the day they are born they bathe them in cold water every day, even when it is covered with ice; though the Patagonians don't understand physic, they know that the motion of the blood is quicker in infancy, and is sufficient to keep them warm, and that the cold affects them no further than the skin.

As they are prepared to bear the severity of the weather, they also are accustomed to every thing appears frightful in the air; they are used to hear and see the troubled sky, and loud winds; they are led into the middle of a garden, and their parents dance round them, and admire the lightnings, as we do the noise of a gun; they count the claps of thunder as we do the report of cannon at public rejoicings, and seem disappointed when it ceases, that they hear no more, and go into their houses only because the show is over. They will tell a young Patagonian, that lightnings will kill, as really happens once or twice a year, that a man is crushed to death by the fall of a tree, a house, or a rock: but this is not a time for talking, but doing; they don't always keep him lying or sitting, when they chuse he should move they set him upon his legs.

As he grows in strength and size daily, the father or his tutor studies every thing that may add to his strenth, activity, and address; any thing he would have for breakfast is put in a basket, and hung upon a tree; if he gets it he must climb the tree, or knock it down with a stone or an arrow; any vegetable he is particularly fond of he must dig out fo the ground, or not get it; if he would have a bird to play with, he must hunt it down; if he chuses a companion in his sports, he is separated from him by a ditch, which he must leap over to come at him; at another time he must climb over a wall to get to his mother: if his father is going to the case, and he has an inclination to follow him, if he is allowed to go, the fther takes him to the foot of a mountain, gets on before him over rocks, and through briers, leaps from point to point, comes back, and finds him following: Come on, my boy, and do like your father. A very Chiron he, educating an Achilles. In the same way he teaches them to carry burthens, to know the use of the lever, to lift weights, to cleave bodies, and to do any thing with his left hand as with his right.

The Patagonian system of education is quite gymnastic, always fortifying the fibres by constancy and dexterous exercise, strengthning the muscles, adjusting the organs to the objects of their respective action, giving them equally pliability and resistance, and accustom[ing] the body to bear and do every thing.

As to the moral education of the Patagonians, they are all intended to promote the social virtues. In this vast university the professors are not satisfied with desiring the pupils to be just, humane, generous, grateful, patient, laborious, temperate, obedient to the laws, the magistrates, and their prince. They are put to the practice of such virtues daily. If a pupil borrows any thing, he is obliged to return it on the day promised; if another wants any thing, the person who has to psare is obliged to give it to him; if one has received a favour, and is not grateful for it, or does not discover it, he is immediately observed; if any of them falls sick, and bears it with patience and meekness, every body is ready to serve him as much as they can; but if he is impatient and ill-natured, he has only bare necessaries. No one is allowed to do himself justice, but if the strong takes upon him to insult the weak, he is severely punished: even the youth appoint judges among themselves to determine all causes of dispute or injustice; a prince is also appointed emblem of him who commands the nation, the school of love, and obedience; they read the book of the laws, mostly which is applied in miniature to the institution of youth. There is a large field in the neighbourhoood of the college, which the pupils cultivate at stated hours, to accustom them to labour, and instruct them in the nature of the earth and it sproductions; in their hours of leisure and amusement they sing heroick songs in praise of the Patagonians, who have been illustrious examples to their country. These are the only ideas that are inculcated in the youth.

The Patagonian children have no imaginary apprehensions about ghosts, witches, significant dreams, fatal days, or unlucky numbers, they are only acquainted with real dangers, that they may learn to avoid them; they are told, learn to manage that horse, he may run away with you; it is possible you may be pursued by a wild beast, learn to defend youself, to run faster than it, to climb up a tree, or attack and kill it, learn to swim least you should have occasion to save yourself or you friend in a time of danger. The females are instructed in the same manner with regard to the dangers both sexes are liable to, in order to lessen them as much as possible.

The Patagonian metropolis is much more extensive than the greatest city in Europe, but no near so populous.

A fine river divides it, with bridges of a great length, and prodigious elevation thrown over it. Through want of taste the Ediles had build houses on those bridges, but they are now taken down by their posterity. There is nothing magnificent, but every thing convenience; the streets are broad, regular, and neat, the markets large, and many of them; conduits are disposed properly, and every part of the town well supplied with water: every body is funished with the conveniences of health and cleanliness by the publick baths and immense edifices, which greatly decorate the city.

Knowing that large cities crowded are very pernicious to health, the country is brought into the city: the houses are but one story high, build separate, with a garden and partk to each house. They build their houses with large beams of wood, notwithstanding they have plenty of stone-quarries, but make use of stone only building publick edifices: they object against stone and mortar, as these materials are apt to sweat out a moisture, which occasions a constant breathing of vapours, which affect the nerves and stomach thro' time.

Every thing is removed that may corrupt the air. Some ignorant, but charitable Patagonian had built hospitals in different parts of the city, but finding the people more sickly in those quarter of the town, the hospitals were removed without the walls, by which means the sick also found good effects, and recovered more speedily: at the same time a regulation was made, that every patient should have a bed to themselves.

A great part of the nation was carried off by a foreign disease, which was brought home by some Patagonian travellers: many means were used to destroy its violence, but to no purpose, till they thought of a method to remove its fatality by communicating the distemper to the subjects after a proper preparation; the practice was brought in vogue after seven or eight successful experiments, and a new hospital built for those who were willing to secure themselves and they children from danger.

The Patagonians are only acquainted with natural medicine: they look upon their blood as the fountain of life, and say it ought not to be exhausted, but purified. Every person is his own family's physician, with the assistance of diet, and a few simples, and calls in his neighbours for their assistance, if he finds himself at a loss. The Patagonians might very easily comfort themselves for their ignornace in medicine, if they were not sensible that some proficiency has been made in it within these two thousand years; they proceed by observation, not by system: the part of physick most esteemed by them is the hygiene, which prevents maladies, by means of temperance, exercise, and alacrity.

As to the general term of the duration of life among the Patagonians, it is to be presumed, that as great bodies keep growing till theirty, their very old age is about two hundred and ten, when their strength fails, and their senses decaying, they seldom regret the loss of life. Their place of burial was formerly within the walls of the city, but, as it was feared the corruption of the dead bodies might infect the living, that was prevented for the future.

About a century ago, the Patagonians were much affrighted by some people, who were supposed to be dead, and had come to life again; they made enquiry of each other what were the certain signs of death; it was determined that ptrification was an undoubted sign: so instead of burying the dead bodies within twenty-four hours, they deferred the interment till there was a sign of putrefaction. This error was of long standing, but time does not consecrate error in that colossal nation, which has more coarse good sense than refined wit.

They live entirely upon fish and vegetables at a certain time of the year, to give the animals time to regenerate and reapir their species; but the hospitals are allowed to sell animal food, in favour of weak constitutions under certain regulations as to price and quality.

Are you are curious to know how a Patagonian lives in a capital city thus built and regulated? I will tell you; a Patagonian, even of the first rank, rises and goes to bed with the sun; in good weather he enjoys the pleasures of the fresh air, and admires the beauties of the morning, the fields, and woods, beautified by Aurora, the trees covered with flowers or fruits, the most pleasing verdure, the playful flocks, the purling brooks, the feather'd songsters, that rejoice at the return of day, all nature, which awakes in smiles, diffuses a pleasing calmness over his soul, and imparts the balm of life to his heart.

Every day he employs himself in some kind of labour, often in husbandry, and always in the open air: he knows that free air, particularly when it is scented with all the perfumes of nature, is more healthful than being in a chamber. He always goes abroad on foot, that he may have the advantage of motion so necessary for the good of his health; neither rain, frost, snow, nor fogs prevents his exercise in winter; as he is unnured to the variations and impressions of the climate from his birth, he is in a manner secured by his own skin.

He has no fixed hours for his meals; as he knows by experience, that gratification is dependent on desire, he eats only when he is hungry, and lives more on vegetables than animal food, as he has a natural dislike to the killing of animals, and remarks, that carnivorous beasts and birds are usually very lean.

The Patagonian approaches nearest to the man of nature of all ment that live in a state of society; ignorant of the arts of luxury, he finds water, and satisfies his thirst; wine is only sold by apothecaries as a medicine, as well as other fermented liquors; he finds milk refreshing, and the most simple foods nourishing, and at the same time pleasing to his taste; he thinks the skins of animals a sufficient covering, and finds his horse relieves him when he is tired with walking; he thinks himself very fine when he is dressed with a metal collar, and a few feathers; these are almost all the Patagonian desires. He is passionately fond of a domestic life, and every thing is pleasing and interesting to him in the midst of his family, his wife, his children, their education, even their noise, his servants, agreeable repasts with his family sometimes in a grove, sheltered from the heat of the sun, and other times in a valley, by the side of a murmuring brook, at other, on the top of a rock, from when he may observe an extensive horizon. He is unacquainted with cold ceremonious visits, and makes none but those of freindship, humanity, or business. He is happiest in his own house, for there he governs, loves, and is beloved. He is not shut up in his house, as we are in ours, a garden, a part, and a live stock are all necessary to his happiness. He is only susceptible of the milder passions, has no ambition, but that of an happiness easily obtained, by treading the steps of nature. If he is called upon to attend publick affairs, and leave this state of tranquillity, he makes that sacrifice for the cause and good of his country, for the offices of state are only burthensome: he returns as soon as possible to his own former private station, his family being to him a most agreeable and lasting amusement.

The Patagonians have also their publick diversions, they have their circus and their amphitheatres, where their youth dispute the prize of leaping, wrestling, running, the management of the bow, the sling, at carrying wegihts, and fighting with beasts. The young females also display their charms there in the most ingenious and forcible manner; they are finely shaped, without having been squeezed in a box of whalebone, or cramped with bars of iron. Such a publick day is the most agreeable of their whole lives; on this occasion they distribute the prizes, and make choice of their husbands, who must be twenty-eight years of age at least: the inequality of condition between families is no objection to any match, the only lawful obstacle is difference of age; they say nature hath for ever separated summer from winter. As to fortune, each individual finds a competency in labour and industry.

Their opera is without action, and consists intirely in recital and description. They sing of the beauty of the sun, the succession of the seasons, the fruitfulness of the earth, conjugal affection, the annual increase of population, freindship, brotherly love, patriotism, the inventors of the plough, the mill, the art of building, language, writing, navigation, etc.

In their tragedies the persons of the drama consist of ancient giants, who wanted to tyrannize over others, because they were stronger and taller. The catastrophe being always consistent with poetical justice, and ending with the punishment of the guilty.

By their comedies it would seem, that the Patagonians don't like to be diverted at the expence of each other, but theykeep some little men as we do dwarfs in Europe, and take pleasure in introducing these on the stage by way of contrast; for example, they represent a Patagonian beauty as setting a man of five feet upon her knee, treating him with great kindness, and desiring him to reach her some fruit from the top of an high tree. The little creature, who has neither the nibleness nor strength of the country, looks up at it, but despairs; she gives him an ax to break down the tree, but he is not able to lift it. A wild beast appraches them; A my dea lover! cries the fair Patagonian, protect me: He seizes a bow, but alas! finds himself so weak, he cannot bend it, which obliges his mistress to fly with her brave defneder under arm. In another scene there is a prize depending upon a leave over a little ditch of water, only thrity free broad; our little man jumps, and falls in the middle. He is offered revenge in a fight with a petty Patagonian, not seven feet and a half high, who knocks him down the first blow; his antagonist is enraged, and the spectators diverted at his impotent resentment.

The Patagonians generally despise men of our size, on account of their own majestick stature, but behave kindly to them, even while they divert themselves with them. These people hope to have comedies soon in a better taste, for the Beaux-esprits, that have succeeded already in the tragedy and opera, are improving the comic theatre at present, but as they are whimsical and quarrelsome, it is feared it will delay the work, but their quarrels furnish the publick with very high entertainment.

The Patagonian theatre is very singular, for without having read either Vitruvius or Palladio, or seen any models from them, their houses are build in the elliptical form, so well proportioned to the eye and ear, that the beholders may see and hear from the most distant parts of the theatre. There are seats in the pit as well as the boxes for the company; the Patagonians say they should not make a toil of a pleasure. Their theatres in general are larger than ours; that of the capital is of an extraordinary size, and so it should be, to hold theirty thousand giants: their inhabitants are about that number, including the common people, who partake of all publick diversions. Their magistrates say, the more people labour, they have the more need for relaxation, and it cannot be a publick diversion which the populace do not share in. There is not the least disturbance either at coming in, or going out of the theatre, notwithstanding the great multitude, because the doors are large, and it is situated in the middle of an extensive square, the avenues spacious and wide in proportion. The building is rustic, but from its height and grandeur, has a majestic appearance.

There are no beggars at the church doors, nor in the streets or highways of Patagonia; all the people are employed in agriculture, or other useful employments. If a person refuses to work, he is compelled to enter upon the settlements for that purpose. Those who are past labour are maintained, to prevent the mortification of being forced to beg. It is labour in general which constitutes the wealth of particular families, as it does that of the state. Certain of subsisting by the work of their hands, they are not apprehenesive of becoming too numberous, whilst labour is universally respected: the more they increase, the more land is cultivated, so that the birth of a Patagonian is always a subject of joy.

Polygamy is forbid, but in case of barrenness, of diseases, or disagreement in temper, the law allows a divorce, but this very seldom happens, when it does, the state provides for the children.

All taxes are paid in the time of harvest, and where it was produced, which makes every one pay regularly: this portion of the state is estimated by its real produce, not by the quality or extent of the soil, and is therefore just what it should be, and the prince takes care of it. Such is the whole system of imposts, and nobody has reason for complaint.

The Patagonians are ignorant of every thing but what is necessary, and that they find where ever they want it. They have no foreign trade, nor have they any notion of the usefulness of commerce, notwithstanding that they have cut a number of artifical rivers a-cross their country, which has the appearance of a trading nation, but they are only canals, which serve to water the country, and affor an easy conveyance from one city to another, and a communication with the capital. The sides of these canals are planted with trees, which adds, greatly to the beauty of the country.

The Patagonians are unacquainted with civil strike; they are not courteous enough to cut each others throats, and being sensible, and being sensible that foreign wars had brought a train of evils on their country, it was determined they should enter into no wars for the future, but such as were in their own defence.

Every Patagonian being bred up to arms and hard labour, he is of course a soldier, and able to defend the land he cultivates; they therefore keep no standing army in time of peace, as they are fearful that soldiers well armed, and well paid, may be converted into slaves ready to obey the call of ambition, and crush their countrymen.

Among the Patagonians, all persons who have behaved well to their country, by obtaining a victory, cultivating a desart, draining a morass, improving the useful arts, or [who] discover remedies against diseases, are maintained by the state, look'd upon as people of consequence, and have places of pre-eminence appointed them in all publick meetings. This honour is only personal, and their children enjoy no benefit from it, but are obliged to labour, and strive to raise themselves by their own industry, that they become as noble as their ancestors.

If any of the nobility among them, by his superior virtues, or fine talents, engages the particular esteem of his nation, he is presented with some valuable possessions, and a collar of topaz. As the noblement must do the honours of the capital, by preparing entertainments, they are generally god oeconomists, to enable them to be just, magnificent, and generous.

They don;t pay their court to their prince in person, unless to give him an opportunity of doing some good; so that he is certain his subjects are happy, when he is alone: he therefore enjoys the pleasures of private life as much as individuals do.

By the laws he is obliged to spend three months every year in making a tour thro' Patagonia, to see whether any part of the government be deficient; and his successor accompanies him in this tour, which instructs him in the nature of the country, the inhabitants, and their employments.

Since the Patagonians have been capable of thinking seriously, they have always paid respect to the laws, which are made at general meetings, and remain in force till grow out of use, and are no longer suited to the times.

The Patagonians were neither unjust nor cruel originally, but had a pride in their humanity and justice. They had however adapted barbarous laws, without knowing them to be so; the people who demanded justice, were ruined by the forms of justice: they punished before conviction, tortured, broke on the wheel, burnt, and impaled all, because it was the custom; till an old Patagonian, a professor in the law, who had distinguished himself in the magistracy, published a new book, intitled, The good sense of the laws, which was agreeably received. I shall give you a few of its articles.

There had been many degrees of jurisdiction before this reformation, that it was necessary to gain the same cause three or four times over, which occasioned great uneasiness to the clients, and hindrance of buisness to carry on their suits. The reformer said, the expedition of justice was as necessary as justice itself, and that the judge cannot be too near the matter to be decided: he was attended to, and heard. Every inhabited town and village had a tribunal of its own, from which there was no appeal; and, by this means, more disputes were determined by arbitration, than by the courts, and that was what was mostly desired by the judges.

The costs were so great before this reformation, that those who gained their cause, said, they had better have given up their point in dispute: it was of no consequence to the client, whether he was ruined by justice or injustice, if he must be ruined at all events. The officers and attendants of the court should be properly provided for, at the expence of the publick, because they cannot improve their land. It was therefore determined, that justice should be had at no expence, and consequently pure and undefiled.

Before the reformation, local customs took place of the laws, and it frequently happened, that a person in doing the same thing, might be right in one place, and wrong in another. The reformer said, reason was every where the same, the same troops ought to have the same discipline. Then the laws were made universal, as the same weights and measures were before, which prevented the unjust trader from imposing upon the honest purchaser; and if any party commenced an unjust suit, he was obliged to pay a certain penalty.

The laws concerning criminal affairs had been very cruel; the person accused of a crime was thrown into a dungeon, without the necessaries of life, infectious, unwholesome, and dark. The reformer said, you are not certain that he is guilty, he should not be punished till he is convicted, imprisonment ought not to be severe but secure: so now the prisoner is as much at ease, except freedom, as in his own house, having the choice of any two friends to be with him in the prison.

Before the reformation they found an hundredd trifling excuses for delaying the tryal of prisoners; it was sometimes a year or more before his fate was determined. Says the authro of the new code, if he should be innocent, a long imprisonment must be hurtful to justice, and the humanity of the Patagonians: it was therefore decreed, that the accused should be tried within a month, a space of time too long, says the law, for the ordinary course of things.

Every thing was done privately before the reformation, the examination, deposition of the witnesses, confrontation. and judgment, as if justice was afraid of the light. The new code addresses the judges in these terms: If the accused is justifiable, you should afford him every means of defence, and to reap the honour of your own integrity; but as all men are subject to prepossession, you don't know but the publick may give you some light into the affair; a person who might witness falsly in private, may be, possibly, struck with remorse in the face of whole nation: a man that is innocent, may appear guilty by his timidity, therefore needs a council to plead for him. When a Patagonian's life is at stake, if his crime is not quite clear, it should at least appear so clear, that all the judges agree in their sentence. This prejudice was laid aside, and according to the new method of proceeding, the judges hear causes, and pass sentence in publick.

Before the reformation, when proofs against the person accused were insufficient, the judges made use of the torture, to see if they could force them to a confession. The reformer says, how cruel and shocking tonature and humanity is such proceeding, if the person is innocent, to be dislocated, broil'd, and torn to pieces; the law cannot torture before judgment. It was with difficulty the courts were prevailed on to give up this point, least it might give room for criminals to escape; but while they were discussing this matter, it happened, that a hardy criminal, by denying the fact obstinately, was saved, and a poor innocent creature of a weak constitution, who could no longer bear the tortures, made a confessions to be released, and was executed. This truth was engraved on brass, as was also the law that destroyed the torture.

Before the reformation was the punishment of all trifling crimes. A number of servants were put to death for pilfering trinkets from their masters, which prevented masters from prosecuting their servants, least they should be universally disliked, and agreed to give them up to justice if they would punish them moderately, to prevent their robbing elsewhere.

Nobody ever proposed saving common robbers, or house breakers from the gallows, yet there were not fewer robberies committed. Punishments were invented for the good of society: a hundred robbers, under proper order, might break up a common drain, a morass, dig a canal, make highways, and so be serviceable to the state, even in their punishments, and these lasting examples of justice might have more effect, than the sight of an execution, which is immediately over.

Another abuse very hurtful to publick safety was, that there was no difference made between the punishment for a robber and murderer, and a robber on the highway. The reformer, who always consulted the first law of good sense, observed on this occasion, that therehsould be degrees of punishment, as well as degrees in crimes, and that it was by degrees that mankind were led to have such impressions made on their minds, as might deter them from crimes: it was therefore resolved, that the mere robber should be condemned to work on the publick highways.

They referred the punishment of death for murder, but it was difficult to determine the manner of inflicting it. The courts were inclined to the most severe punishmnet, imagining that the horror of them would deter men from crimes; and they were confirmed in that opinion by a Patagonian, who had talked with a Spaniard among the Chanos' he was informed by him, that the enlightened people on the continent of Europe were extremely severe on these occasions. Heaven protect us from beings so enlightened! replied the reformer; men are not to be worked upon by extremes, let us try to affect their minds by moderate punishments, as much as they now are by these severe ones, which I am certain leave a stain of barbarity on the nation who uses them: having shewed his good sense on all other subjects, the publick depended on him in this also. From that time they have only drowned murders, and don't find, since that time, that crimes have increased, and therefore are convinced, that tormenting punishments have no effect towards reforming. The people shut themselves up in their houses on the day of an execution, so great is their terror to see the death of a Patagonian.

They execute no sentence of death till the sovereign sings it with his own hand; the law seems to appeal to him thus: on this affair depends the life of a man, and as you are a man, judge if it is necessary to take him from society.

A Patagonian financer proposed to seize the properties of a condemned criminal, to enrich the exchequer: Barbarian, said the prince, his wife and children are sufficiently miserable, she in having such a husband, and they, in having such a father; wouldst thou have the punishment to fall on the innocent?

The person who made the proposal had part of his own property taken from him, to helpt the distressed family.

There are very few deserters in this country, as the nation engages in no wars but what are merely defensive. The soldier defends his own property, by defending the property of others, as he is attached to his own house, his wife, and his children. The punishment inflicted on deserters was, to walk about the camp, in a woman's dress, three days, and discharged from the service. This punishment was more terrible than death to most of the Patagonians.

Slanderers are not punished, whether they can find no punishment for detraction, or that they take no notice of it, can't be determined. The person who accuses another, does it in the face of the law, and if he is found guilty of fase imputation, he has the same punishment, inflicted on him, which intended the innocent person should have.

What the new code is mostly admired for, is, its laws are sensible, clear, precise, simple, and not arbitrary. The former laws were scarce known to the publick, and were often wrong interpreted: a sure proof that they were captious, and hard to be understood. Interpretation of the present laws is not allowed, and they are so plain, that they are taught the you in the very words of the text.

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