New documents have been made public from the English Civil War including, amongst more straightforward (if still fascinating) acoounts, some more fantastical ones:
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4484-1401565,00.html
Emps
There are also records of unusual discoveries, including the finding of a “miraculous sea monster with two heads and ten horns” — probably a giant squid — off the coast of Ireland. Another is an explorer’s account of “hairy giants” in a description of two islands in the South Sea, called Benganga and Coma, discovered in a voyage which started in January 1669 and finished that October.
It says: “The natives that rode in the canoes were all hairy, having no other clothing than what nature had furnished them with; and the least of them, by computation, above 11 foot high.”
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4484-1401565,00.html
Emps