Chinese Giants
The Chinese pretend to have men among them so prodigious as fifteen feet high. Melchior Nunnez, in his letters from India, speaks of porters who guarded the gates of Pekin, who were of that immense height; and in a letter dated in 1555, he avers that the emperor of that country entertained and fed five hundred of such men for archers of his guard. Hakewill, in his “Apologie,” 1627, repeats this story. Purchas, in his “Pilgrimes,” 1625, refers to a man in China who “was cloathed with a tyger’s skin, the hayre outward, his arms, head and legges bare, with a rude pole in his hand; well-shaped, seeming ten palmes or spans long; his hayre hanging on his shoulders.”