GIANT SCOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 11, 14 January 1935, Page 9

GIANT SCOT.

ANGUS MacASKILL.

MEMORIAL IN NOVA SCOTIA,

EXTRAORDINARY FEATS

HALIFAX, X.S., Canada. Over a grave in the village cemetery of St. Ann. looking out to the Atlantic, stands a plain gray stone with the name Angus MacAskill and the inscription, "Mark the perfect man and behold the upright." It. is the grave of one of the strongest men who ever lived, a giant of perfect physical proportions, and his memory still is green in the district where he lived.

MacAskill was born in the Hebrides, went to St. Aim in his childhood, and before lite growth was complete stood 7ft Sin in height and weighed 34st 41b. His strength was prodigious, and he was as kind—the tradition says —as he was strong. On one occasion a sick man had to be taken 25 miles to a doctor through a driving rainstorm. MacAskill put the invalid across his back. and tramped with him the 25 miles without once putting him down. He could lift a weight "of 1001b with a couple of fingers of each hand, hold them extended at arm's length for ten minutes, or saunter down the street with a 3001b barrel of salt pork under each arm. Once, single-handed, ho set "a 40ft mast in his fishing schooner as if he had been handling a fence post.

In his travels MacAskill had an audience with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. One day in Xew York he lifted an anchor weighing 27501b. As he casually flung it aside one of the llukes struck him, inflicting injuries from which he died eight'years later in 1803. It is proposed now to set up a memorial in the form of a life-size statue. The feet will be IBiir long.