districts, assure the newspaper-editors of their ability to lift twelve
hundred pounds; and many a young oarsman can prove to you that he has
pulled his mile faster than Ward or Clark, if you will only let him give
his own guess at time and distance.

It is easy, therefore, to trace the origin of these exaggerations. Those
old navigators, for instance, who saw so many fine things which were
not to be seen, how should they help peopling the barbarous realms with
races of giants? Job Hartop, who three times observed a merman rise
above water to his waist, near the Bermudas,--Harris, who endured such
terrific cold in the Antarctics, that once, perilously blowing his nose
with his fingers, it flew into the fire and was seen no more,--Knyvett,
who, in the same regions, pulled off his frozen stockings, and his toes
with them, but had them replaced by the ship's surgeon,--of course
these men saw giants, and it is only a matter for gratitude that they
vouchsafed us dwarfs also, to keep up some remains of self-respect in
us. In Magellan's Straits, for instance, they saw, on one side, from
three to four thousand pigmies with mouths from ear to ear; while on the
other shore they saw giants whose footsteps were four times as large as
an Englishman's,--which was a strong expression, considering that the
Englishman's footstep had already reached round the globe.

The only way to test these earlier observations is by later ones. For
instance, in the year 1772, a Dutchman named Roggewein discovered Easter
Island. His expedition had cost the government a good deal, and he
had to bring home his money's worth of discoveries. Accordingly, his
islanders were all giants,--twice as tall, he said, as the tallest of
the Europeans; "they measured, one with another, the height of twelve
feet; so that we could easily,--who will not wonder at it?--without
stooping, have passed between the legs of these sons of Goliath.