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. On the tomb was a
copper plate which said that the tomb contained the remains of
"the noble and puissant lord, the Chevalier Ricon de Vallemont."
Plater, the famous physician, declares that he saw at Lucerne the
true human bones of a subject that must have been at least 19
feet high.
Valence in Dauphine boasted of possessing the bones of the giant
Bucart, the tyrant of the Vivarias, who was slain by his vassal,
Count de Cabillon. The Dominicans had the shin-bone and part of
the knee-articulation, which, substantiated by the frescoes and
inscriptions in their possession, showed him to be 22 1/2 feet
high.
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