144 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 
an old hunter on the Yukon River of 
Alaska who measured the length of 
grizzly bears by the fathom ; I have had 
a Mexican charge me for a saddle by the 
pound, carefully weighing it and esti¬ 
mating the resulting cost; and when I 
tried to find how much an exceptionally 
fine field of wheat yielded to the acre, the 
reply was equally surprising. The owner, 
as he boasted of the field, knew nothing 
of so many bushels to the acre (or to the 
hectare, which is their usual standard of 
measurement), nor even of any ratio of 
pounds or kilograms to a known area; 
but he loudly bragged that he raised one 
hundred for one, while only a few of his 
neighbors could claim as high as fifty for 
one, forty for one being the average for the 
whole valley. Now one hundred for one 
meant that he got one hundred grains for 
