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Updated: May 27, 2025
They faced north from the back of the building, which stood against the mountain-side; but the sitting-room had a second window at the corner of the block, and from this the eye went up over a plantation of dark firs to the white snowfields of the Col and the dark jagged wall of the Aiguille du Geant distant, yet as clear as if stencilled against the blue heaven.
The rest of the garden consisted of bare, sun-baked tracts of clay, intersected by gravel walks. I felt certain that amongst these seedlings there must have been a two-inch high specimen of the Baobab "l'arbre geant," the pride of Tartarin's heart, the tree which, as he explained, might under favourable conditions grow 200 feet high.
In the Turner yard at Philadelphia there reposed an enormous aerostat, whose strength had been tried by highly compressed air. It well merited the name of the monster balloon. How large was Nadar's Geant? Six thousand cubic meters. How large was John Wise's balloon? Twenty thousand cubic meters. How large was the Giffard balloon at the 1878 Exhibition? Twenty-five thousand cubic meters.
The word giant is derived indirectly from the old English word "geant," which in its turn came from the French of the conquering Normans. It is of Greek derivation, "gigas", or the Latin, "gigas." The Hebrew parallel is "nophel," or plural, "nephilim." Ancient Giants. We are told in the Bible a that the bedstead of Og, King of Basham, was 9 cubits long, which in English measure is 16 1/2 feet.
In one place the Glacier du Geant is above eleven hundred yards wide; that of the Lechaud is above eight hundred; that of Talefre above six hundred the total, when joined, two thousand five hundred yards; and this enormous mass of solid ice is forced through a narrow neck of the valley, which is, in round numbers, only nine hundred yards wide!
"The 'Geant' gave an almost imperceptible shake on finding itself free, and then commenced to rise. The ascent was slow and gradual at first the monster seemed to be feeling its way. An immense shout rose with it from the assembled multitude. We ascended grandly, whilst the deafening clamour of two hundred thousand voices seemed to increase.
The most powerful of the fountains is, however, a grand jet, characteristically named the Geant, or giant, for the incredible force with which it springs from its basin, and rises 125 feet high, being more than the elevation of Napoleon's triumphal column, in the Place Vendôme, at Paris.
That were impossible. I can merely fix my stakes to-day and leave them. To-morrow or next day I will return to observe the result." The eastern side of the Glacier du Geant, near the Tacul, at which they soon arrived, showed an almost perpendicular precipice about 140 feet high.
Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, and the "Intransi- geant" and the "Rappel" were filled with the echoes of the explosion. The tone of these organs is rarely edifying, and it had never been less so than on this occasion. I wondered, as I looked through them, whether I was losing all my radicalism; and then I wondered whether, after all, I had any to lose.
Likewise the Iles of Lucayos nere to the Ile of Hispaniola, and of the north side unto that of Cuba, in nomber beinge above three score ilandes, together with those which they call the Iles of Geant, one with another greate and little, whereof the very worste is fertiler then the kinges garden at Civill, and the contrie the helthsomest in the worlde.
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