The naturalist Turner says that on the river Plata near the Brazilian coast he saw naked savages 12 feet high; and in his description of America, Thevenot confirms this by saying that on the coast of Africa he saw on a boat the skeleton of an American giant who had died in 1559, and who was 11 feet 5 inches in height.

He claims to have measured the bones himself.
He says that the bones of the leg measured 3 feet 4 inches, and the skull was 3 feet and 1 inch, just about the size of the skull of Borghini, who, however, was only of ordinary height.

In his account of a voyage to the Straits of Magellan, Jacob Lemaire says that on December 17, 1615, he found at Port Desire several graves covered with stones, and beneath the stones were skeletons of men which measured between 10 and 11 feet.

The ancient idea of the Spaniards was that the men of Patagonia were so tall that the Spanish soldiers could pass under their arms held out straight; yet we know that the Patagonians exhibit no exaggeration of height--in fact, some of the inhabitants about Terra del Fuego are rather diminutive.

This superstition of the voyagers was not limited to America; there were accounts of men in the neighborhood of the Peak of Teneriffe who had 80 teeth in their head and bodies 15 feet in height.
Discoveries of "Giants' Bones."-- Riolan, the celebrated anatomist, says that there was to be seen at one time in the suburbs of Saint Germain the tomb of the giant Isoret, who was reputed to be 20 feet tall; and that in 1509, in digging ditches at Rouen, near the Dominicans, they found a stone tomb containing a monstrous skeleton, the skull of which would hold a bushel of corn; the shin-bone measured about 4 feet, which, taken as a guide, would make his height over 17 feet.