104 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



In tr3dng to learn a new language of this kind most 

 people (I imagine) would begin, as we did, with the 

 numerals. But our researches in this direction did not 

 take us very far, for we made the interesting discovery 

 that they have words for one and two only ; inakwa 

 (one), jamani (two). This is not to say that they cannot 

 reckon beyond two, for they can, by using the fingers 

 and thumbs, and beginning always with the thumb 

 of the right hand, reckon with tolerable accuracy up to 

 ten. For numbers above ten they use the toes, never, 

 so far as we observed, two or three toes, but always 

 all the toes together to indicate a large but uncertain 

 number. Sometimes they opened and closed the fingers 

 of both hands two or three times and uttered the word 

 takirl, which appeared to mean " many." They did 

 not, as some people do, use the word which means 

 " hand " to indicate five or a quantity of about that 

 number. 



With patience we learnt a great number of sub- 

 stantives, the names of animals, the parts of the body, 

 the various possessions of the natives and so forth, and 

 with more difficulty we learnt some of the active verbs. 

 But when we came to abstract ideas, our researches 

 ceased abruptly for lack of the question words, who, 

 how, where, when, etc. ; these we were never able to 

 learn, and it is impossible to act them. 



Thus we were never able to find out what they 

 thought of various things ; we could point to the moon 

 and be told its name, but we were never able to say, 

 " What is the moon ? " We learnt the names of light- 

 ning and thunder, but we never knew who they thought 



