32 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



At Cape Bedford the adverbial form kundoi-go means three 

 only, and is used to express any small number, hut only in com- 

 parison with a large one, and is the nearest approach to our word 

 "few"; kundo-kundo, or threes and threes, i.e., many, is com- 

 parable with onr expression "dozens and dozens" 5 . On the 

 Bloomrield any number beyond three is wor-pul, corresponding to 

 our "plenty." The. Tally Blacks speak of a comparatively 

 smaller and larger lot beyond three as mundi and katai respec- 

 tively, with the result that they have been in perfect good faith 

 applied to our words "four " and " five." 



As already mentioned, the counting is always done in pairs, 

 and whatever the object of enumeration (excepting only the 

 intervening days of the prun) no other aids to memory than the 

 lingers are utilised. Opening the one hand (generally the right 

 at Cape Bedford), he turns down digit by digit, commencing with 

 the thumb (Bloomfield) or little finger (Cape Bedford), counting 

 as he does so ; over five he commences again, but turns down two 

 at a time, with each couplet saying " and two." On the Tully, 

 after counting up anything, the Tally Blacks will often express 

 the total as it were by using the term ballan-jo, i.e., the lot. 



Part III. 



Signals on the Road : Gesture Language. 



The ideagrams represented here are additional to those given 

 in the " Ethnological Studies," etc., the figures in which are here 

 referred to as " E.S." with a corresponding number. Since that 

 work was written, I must include the eating of the corpse by the 

 near relatives (see Pennefather River, etc., Burial Ceremonies) 8 

 as another condition where gesture language is employed. 



Signals on the Road. 



Throughout the unsettled districts there are narrow path-ways, 

 regular beaten pads, more or less all over the country. When a 

 tree falls across this track, it is the latter which is shifted to the 

 i ight or left as the case may be. 



To indicate the route taken by the traveller to those who are 



following behind, he makes use of certain signals, the commonest 



t which is done with the big toe. On the Pennefather River, 



for instance, between it and the Batavia, the trail of the big toe 



■ Roth -Bull. 2-Sect. 25. 

 Roth -Austr. Mus. Rec, vi., 5, 1907, p. 308. 



