famine, which lafted the greatest part of 1758, and is fuppofed to have fwept away 50 or 60 thousand fouls in this city and its environs. I blefs God I was not a fpectator of this complicated scene of mife ry; the very defcription of it must diftrefs a compaffionate difpofition; the fight of it must have made an impreffion on an heart of flint.

I have already acquainted you, in a former letter, with our troubles by earthquakes, &c. of 1759, and 1760, and therefore fhall proceed from the date of my laft letter. The latter end of March, 1761, the plague, which had lain dormant fince autumn, made its appearance again in this city, and alarmed us confiderably. Though I confefs it did not furprize me; fo far from not expecting its return, I fhould have looked on it almost as a miracle if we had efcaped, after the little progrefs it had made among us the preceding year. The infection crept gently and gradually on, confined chiefly to one particular quarter till the beginning of May, when it began to fpread vifibly and univerfally. We fhut up on the 27th, and our confinement lafted 96 days. The fury indeed of the contagion did not continue longer than the middle of July, and many of our merchants went abroad with caution early in Auguft; but as our conful had no urgent business to induce him to expofe himself to any rifk, we remained in clofe quarters till we could visit our friends with tolerable fecurity. As an addition to the uneafinefs of our fituation, the earthquakes returned the latter end of April, though with no great violence, except the firft fhock, and that much lefs terrible

than those of 1759. We felt fix or seven within the week, and four more at long intervals during our imprisonment; but as they were all flight, our apprehenfions foon fubfided. At our release from confinement the last day of August, we flattered ourselves with the hope of a fpeedy releafe from danger: but it pleafed God to order it otherwife. In all the plagues with which Aleppo has been visited in this century, the contagion is faid to have regularly and conftantly ceafed in Auguft or September, the hotteft months in the year; and it is pretty certain that it difappeared about that time in 1742, 1743, 1744, and 1760; but unfortunately for us that now refide here, the year 1761 has proved an inftance of the fallacy of general obfervations on this dreadful fubject; for from the end of March, 1761, to the middle of September, 1762, fcarce a day has paffed without fome deaths or fresh attacks from the diftemper; and though the violence of it ceafed in the autumn, yet I believe, on an avarage, it was fatal to at least 30 perfons in every week, from that time to the end of the winter. In February laft we were pretty healthy; hearing but a few accidents, and those in the fkirts of the city, we once more began to entertain some faint hopes of a farther exemption, but they were of very fhort duration. In March the infection fpread again, and in April increased with fuch rapidity, that we were obliged to retire to our clofe quarters on the 26th of that month. I have now the fatisfaction of informing you that, by the bleffing of Providence, we are once more fafe and at liberty, though after a confine

H4

ment

pro

hulband: the very day he died of the plague, my fervant had received my linen from his house, and I had carelefly put on fome of it even without airing. This accident happened many weeks after we were open, and his illness was induftrioufly kept a fecret. The laft month of my confinement this year paffed very heavily with me indeed; for I found my health much difordered. Whether it ceeded from a cold I catched in my head by fleeping in the open air in fome very windy nights, from want of exercise, or from the uneafinefs of mind naturally attending our melancholy fituation, I know not; but my nerves feemed all relaxed, my fpirits in a state of dejection unknown to me before, and my head fo heavy and confufed that I could neither write nor read for an hour together with application or pleafure. Since our release, I have paffed a month at a garden about an hour's ride from the city, for the fake of exercife and fresh air, and find myfelf much relieved by it, though my head is far from being yet clear.

Among many particulars relating to the prefent plague that I have heard, the following anecdotes feem fomewhat extraordinary; and yet, as they are well attefted, I have

no reafon to doubt of the truth of them, viz. laft year as well as this, there has been more than one inftance of a woman's being delivered of an infected child, with the plague fores on its body, though the mother herself has been entirely free from the diftemper.

A woman that fuckled her own child of five months, was feized with a moft fevere plague, and died

after a week's illness; but the child, though it fucked her, and lay in the fame bed with her during her whole diforder, efcaped the infec

tion.

A woman upwards of an hundred years of age was attacked with the plague, and recovered : her two grand-children of ten and fixteen received the infection from her, and were both carried off by it.

While the plague was making terrible ravage in the island of Cyprus, in the fpring of 1760, a woman remarkably fanguine and corpulent, after lofing her husband and two children, who died of the plague in her arms, made it her daily employment, from a princi ple of charity, to attend all her fick neighbours that flood in need of her affiftance, and yet escaped the infection. Alfo a Greek lad made it his bufinefs for many months to wait on the fick, to wafh, drefs, and bury the dead, and yet he remained unhurt. In that contagion ten men were faid to die to one woman; but the perfons to whom it was almost univerfally fatal, were youths of both fexes. Many places were left fo bare of inhabitants as not to have enough left to gather in the fruits of the earth. It ceafed entirely in July, 1760, and has not appeared in the island fince.

The plague feems this year to have been in a manner general over a great part of the Ottoman empire. We have advice of the havock it has made at Conftantinople, Smyrna, Saloricha, Brufa, Adena, Antioch, Antab, Killis, Ourfah, Diarbekir, Moufol, and many other large towns and vil lages. Scanderoon, for the first time, I believe, this century, has

fuffered

fuffered confiderably the other Frank fettlements on the fea-coaft of Syria have been exempted, except a few accidents at Tripoli, which drove the English conful, Mr. Abbot, into a clofe retirement for a week or two; but the storm foon blew over.

Account of Giants: from a memoir. lately read before the Academy of Sciences of Rouen. By M. Le Cat.

TH

HE bible mentions feveral races of giants, as the Rephaims, the Anakims, the Emims, the Zonzonims, and others. Profane hiftorians alfo mention giants: they gave feven feet of height to Hercules their firft hero; and in our days we have feen men eight feet high. The giant who was fhewn in Rouen, in 1735, measured eight feet fome inches. The emperor Maximin was of that fize: Skenkius and Platerus, phyficians of the last century, faw feveral of that ftature; and Goropius faw a girl who was ten feet high.

The body of Oreftes, according to the Greeks, was eleven feet and a half; the giant Galbara, brought from Arabia to Rome, under Claudius Cæfar, was near ten feet; and the bones of Secondilla and Pufio, keepers of the gardens of Salluft, were but fix inches fhorter.

Funnam, a Scotfman, who lived in the time of Eugene the fecond, king of Scotland, measured eleven feet and a half; and Jacob le Maire, in his voyage to the Streights of Magellan, reports, that the 17th of December, 1615, they found at Port Defire feveral graves covered with ftones, and having

the curiofity to remove the ftones, they difcovered human skeletons of ten and eleven feet long.

The chev. Scory, in his voyage to the Pike of Teneriffe, fays, that they found in one of the fepulchral caverns of that mountain the head of a Guanche which had 80 teeth, and that the body was not less than 15 feet long.

The giant Ferragus, flain by Orlando, nephew of Charlemain, was 18 feet high.

Rioland, a celebrated anatomift, who wrote in 1614, fays, that fome years before, there was to be feen in the fuburbs of St. Germain the tomb of the giant Iforet, who was 20 feet high.

In Rouen, in 1509, in digging in the ditches near the Dominicans, they found a stone tomb containing a fkeleton whose skull held a bushel of corn, and whofe fhin-bone reached up to the girdle of the talleft man there, being about four feet long, and confequently the body must have been feventeen or eighteen feet high. Upon the tomb was a plate of copper, where on was engraved, "In this tomb lies the noble and puiffant Lord, the chevalier Ricon de Vallemont, and his bones." Platerus, a famous phyfician, declares, that he faw at Lucerne the true human bones of a subject, which must have been at leaft nineteen feet high,

Valence in Dauphiné boafts of poffeffing the bones of the giant Bucart, tyrant of the Vivarais, who was flain by an arrow by the count de Cabillon, his vaffal. The Dominicans had a part of the fhinbone, with the articulation of the knee, and his figure painted in fresco, with an infcription, fhewing that this giant was 22 feet and

a half

a half high, and that his bones were found in 1705, near the banks of the Morderi, a little river at the foot of the mountain of Cruffol, upon which (tradition fays) the giant dwelt.

January 11, 1613, fome mafons digging near the ruins of a caftle in Dauphiné, in a field which (by tradition) had long been called the giant's field, at the depth of 18 feet discovered a brick tomb 30 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet high; on which was a grey ftone, with the words Theutobochus Rex, cut thereon. When the tomb was opened, they found a human fkele ton entire, 25 feet and a half long, 10 feet wide across the fhoulders, and five feet deep from the breaftbone to the back. His teeth were about the fize each of an ox's foot, and his thin bone measured four feet.

Near Mazarino, in Sicily, in 1516, was found a giant 30 feet high; his head was the fize of an hogfhead, and each of his teeth weighed 5 ounces.

Near Palermo, in the valley of Mazara, in Sicily, a skeleton of a giant 30 feet long was found, in the year 1548; and another of 33 feet high, in 1550; and many curious perfons have ferved feveral of thefe gigantic bones.

pre

The Athenians found near their city two famous fkeletons, one of 34 and the other of 36 feet high.

At Totu, in Bohemia, in 758, was found a skeleton, the head of which could scarce be encompaffed by the arms of two men together; and whofe legs, which they ftill keep in the caftle of that city, were 26 feet long.

The fkull of the giant found in Macedonia, Sept. 1691, held 210 pounds of corn.

The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane, who treated this matter very learnedly, does not doubt these facts, but thinks the bones were thofe of elephants, whales, or other enormous animals.

Elephants bones may be fhewn for thofe of giants; but they can never impofe on connoiffeurs.

Whales, which, by their immenfe bulk, are more proper to be fubftituted for the largest giants, have neither arms nor legs; and the head of that animal hath not the least resemblance with that of a man. If it be true, therefore, that a great number of the gigantic bones which we have mentioned have been seen by anatomifts, and have by them been reputed real human bones, the existence of giants is proved.

An account of the extraordinary and sudden Growth of a child.

JAMES VIALA, a native of

the hamlet of Bouzanquet, in the diocefe of Alais, though of a ftrong constitution, appeared to be knit and stiff in his joints till he was about four years and a half old. During this time nothing further was remarkable of him than an extraordinary appetite, which was fatisfied no otherwise than by giving him plenty of the common aliments of the inhabitants of the country, confifting of rye bread, chefnuts, bacon, and water; but his limbs foon becoming fupple and pliable, and his body beginning to expand itfelf, he grew up in fo extraordi

nary