GIANTS AND DWARFS.
"Have dwarfs and giants ever really existed?"
"Only so long as no traveller penetrated the countries they were supposed
to inhabit," would be the reasonable reply. For since the globe has been
explored in all directions, and tourists are compelled to be more measured
in their narratives, travellers' wonders are greatly diminished.
A belief in the existence of nations of giants and dwarfs was, however,
long entertained; one of the many errors bequeathed to us by antiquity,
and adopted by modern credulity.
The ancients had their Titans and Cyclops; of whom Polyphemus, the most
towering, was three hundred feet high; while we moderns, more moderate,
allow only ten feet to the Patagonian. From the period the Magellan
regions became better known, their proportions were still further reduced;
and we now allow only an average of seven feet. Credulity, distance, and
the love of the marvellous, tend greatly to the exaggeration of such
allotments.
The Bible, like mythology, has its giants; but in most cases, they are
exceptional; and it is undeniable that nature often digresses, and
produces individuals differing in stature from the ordinary standard of
mankind.
Most people have heard of Bébé, the famous dwarf of the King of Poland,
who came to Paris in the early part of the Consulate; and of Friand, the
giant, whose height exceeded seven feet two inches. But these two were
exceptions, not the types of a race. Excepting the Greenlanders,
Laplanders, and Samoyedes, there is little variation of stature among the
different populations of the globe, certainly not more than a tenth. As
regards the inhabitants of the arctic regions, we must bear in mind that
their stunted proportions are in harmony with the rigid, and unkindly
nature of their climates; in proof of which may be cited the similarity of
climate between Lapland and certain vallies of the frozen regions of
Switzerland. A similar influence is manifest in the inhabitants of the two
localities; the peasants of the Valais, afflicted with the goitre, having
more analogy with the Laplanders than with the fine population of
Switzerland.
There are few phenomenal races, though many individuals; just as the
monstrous fruits grown for horticultural prizes cannot be regarded as fair
samples of a species. It would be as rational to cite, by way of example,
the fabulous creations of Rabelais and Swift, the giant Gargantua, and the
nation of Lilliputians.
Polyphemus and his Cyclops are real, as they exist in the pages of Homer
and Virgil; but ideal the moment Flasellus asserts that the remains of
Polyphemus were found in Sicily, near Mount Eripana, of which he gives the
following account.
"The giant was seated with his left hand resting on the mast of a ship
terminated like a club, and carrying fifteen hundred weight of lead. It
crumbled into dust upon being touched, except part of his skull; which
would have contained several bushels of corn. Three teeth of which the
least weighed one hundred ounces, and a thigh bone, one hundred and twenty
feet long, were still perfect." Between Homer, and Virgil, and Thomas
Flasellus there is all the difference of ingenious fiction and the
grossest imposture produceable in prose.
In former days, the head of Adam was believed to have out-topped the
atmosphere, and that he touched the Arctic Pole with one hand, and the
Antarctic with the other; one of the hyperbolical exaggerations of the
rabbinical Scriptures. After Adam, the rabbins rank Og, the King of Basan,
to whom Holy Writ assigns thirteen or fourteen feet, while the rabbinical
writings declare that the stature of Og was such that the waters of the
deluge only came up to his knee. In the war against the Israelites, he
hurled a mountain against the enemy; but as he held it above his head, God
decreed that the ants should excavate it, so that it fell about his neck
like a collar. Moses, who was six ells high, profiting by the
circumstance, grasped a formidable axe, and making a spring of his own
height, could only strike the giant on the instep. The King, however,
fell, and encumbered by the mountain, was put to death.
Polyphemus, and all other giants might have danced upon the palm of King
Og; and the thigh of the Cyclops would scarcely have furnished him a
toothpick. The Jewish rabbins affirm that the thigh bone of Og, the King
of Basan, was about twelve leagues long. They do not, however, give the
precise measure.
Pomponius Mela, the most incredible of the authors of antiquity, states
that certain of the Indian tribes were of such exceeding stature, that
they mounted their elephants as we do our horses. Father Rhetel, a
Capuchin friar, saw at Thessalonica the bones of a giant ninety-six feet
long; the skull of which could contain twenty-four bushels of corn.
Herodotus states that the shoe of Perseus measured three feet. The wise
Plutarch, himself adopted the history of the giant Antæus, related by
that illustrious liar Gabirius. According to some historians, King
Tentradus was twenty-five feet high; Goliath was nine feet four inches;
the Emperor Maximin was more than eight; and the Elector of Brandenbourg,
Joachim, had at his Court a man named Michael, who was about eight feet
high. The height of Goliath, Maximin and Michael were mere instances of
the caprices of nature.
The early legends of stupendous giants arose from the fact, that the
fossil remains of antediluvial animals were originally ascribed to the
human race; whereas, geologists have never found, either in calcareous or
granitical formations, any bones of the human species which could have
preceded the deluge.
Having dismissed the giants, let us consider the dwarfs, concerning whom
our conclusions are the same:--that they are exceptions to the general
rule. Nay, the impossibility of establishing a race has been proved by a
German Princess, who having married and settled several couples of dwarfs,
failed in securing a diminutive progeny.
The existence of pygmies is the sole question concerning the dwarfish
species requiring attention; but though so long credited by the ancients,
it is now looked upon as fabulous. Aristotle, the evangelist of science,
affirms that pygmies were not fabulous; and placed them near the source of
the Nile, in a country created purposely for them, in which the nature of
every thing was proportionate. Some authors have pronounced the pygmies to
have been twenty-eight inches high; but Juvenal only allows them a foot.
These ideal dwarfs must have been about the size of the young American,
popularly known under the name of General Tom Thumb.
The pygmies are said to have been courageous and enterprising; dexterous
with the bow, and, according to Pliny, hewed down with an axe the corn,
which to them was in about the proportions of the oaks of Dodona.
The most valorous exploit attempted by the pygmies was the siege of
Hercules. Pliny relates, that one day the son of Alcmena having fallen
asleep in the country of the pygmies, their King assembling his troops,
led a division against his right arm, surrounded his left, then at the
head of his troops charged the head, leaving the remainder of the army to
capture the feet. On awaking, Hercules spread out his cloak, and made the
whole army of pygmies prisoners. This is a pretty fable, and may have
originated the Lilliputians of the Dean of St. Patrick's. But we have no
hesitation in affirming, that though the words giants and pygmies may
serve as terms of comparison, they have no prototypes among the nations of
the earth.