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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Patagonians who border upon Cujo towards the south, and of whose gigantic stature so much has been said, do not differ materially in this respect from other men. The Pojas, one of their tribes, are governed by several petty independent princes. A singular species of polygamy prevails among this people, as the women are permitted to have several husbands.
They hate walking so much that they mount horses just to go down and pick up shells on the beach a few yards off. A white man was living amongst these Patagonians; a miserable, decrepit-looking fellow, who said he came from the United States, but he spoke English very imperfectly, and the explorers took him to be a German-Swiss.
"Yes," replied Tom Austin, "if all the Patagonians are cut after the same pattern, I must compliment Patagonia." "I protest against leaving out the horse," said Paganel. "He is part and parcel of the Patagonian, and I'm much mistaken if we don't see them again, the one on the other's back." "What distance are we from the Atlantic?" asked the Major.
They are now reduced to a small number by the ravages of the small-pox. The fourth race, called the Tehuelhets, or in their own language the Tehuel-kunnees or southern-men, are the real Patagonians. These are again subdivided into many tribes, all of which and the Chechehets also are called Serranos or mountaineers by the Spaniards.
At the end of this time the Admiral set sail, and the unfortunate Patagonians who had been entrapped were carried off, the equally unfortunate Spaniards being left on shore. Sailing southward, the explorers at length reached the latitude of 51 degrees 40 minutes, where, finding a convenient port, and plenty of fuel, water, and fish, they remained two months longer.
It is worn long, generally divided at the neck, so as to hang in two folds over the shoulders and back, but is sometimes bound above the temples by a fillet, over which it flows in ample luxuriance. Like more civilized people, the Patagonians take great pride in the proper disposition and effective display of their hair.
Montesinos indicates that many of the people who came up into the highlands at that time were seeking arable lands for their crops and were "fleeing from a race of giants" possibly Patagonians or Araucanians who had expelled them from their own lands. On their journey they had passed over plains, swamps, and jungles. It is obvious that a great readjustment of the aborigines was in progress.
The writer does not claim to be an expert dietetician, but there are few spots on the habitable globe that he has not visited; scarcely an edible article that he has not partaken of; scarcely a known species of human being that he has not eaten with, except the Patagonians and the Esquimaux; so that he is not entirely without experience, and it may be just possible that practical experience thus gained may be as valuable as statistics compiled in an from data collected from different sources.
The average stature of adults varies in different races from four feet one inch in certain blacks to nearly six feet and seven inches, as among the Patagonians. These are the extreme values for normal averages, although dwarfs only fifteen inches high have been known, while "giants" sometimes occur with a height of nine feet and five inches.
The enormous savage races have turned out, as has been shown, to be travellers' tales, even the Patagonians being brought down to an average of five feet ten inches, and being, moreover, only a part of a race, the Abipones, of which the other families are smaller.
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