s often the case; and the comment is
frequently made by explorers that the tribes they have visited have no
words for numbers higher than 3, 4, 5, 10, or 20, but that counting is
carried beyond that point by the aid of fingers or other objects. So
reluctant, in many cases, are savages to count by words, that limits have
been assigned for spoken numerals, which subsequent investigation proved to
fall far short of the real extent of the number systems to which they
belonged. One of the south-western Indian tribes of the United States, the
Comanches, was for a time supposed to have no numeral words below 10, but
to count solely by the use of fingers. But the entire scale of this
taciturn tribe was afterward discovered and published.

To illustrate the awkward and inconvenient forms of expression which
abound in primitive numeral nomenclature, one has only to draw from such
scales as those of the Zuni, or the Point Barrow Eskimos, given in the
last chapter. Terms such as are found there may readily be duplicated
from almost any quarter of the globe. The Soussous of Sierra Leone[126]
call 99 _tongo solo manani nun solo manani_, _i.e._ to take (10
understood) 5 + 4 times and 5 + 4. The Malagasy expression for 1832
is[127] _roambistelo polo amby valonjato amby arivo_, 2 + 30 + 800 + 1000.
The Aztec equivalent for 399 is[128] _caxtolli onnauh poalli ipan caxtolli
onnaui_, (15 + 4) x 20 + 15 + 4; and the Sioux require for 29 the
ponderous combination[129] _wick a chimen ne nompah sam pah nep e chu wink
a._ These terms, long and awkward as they seem, are only the legitimate
results which arise from combining the names of the higher and lower
numbers, according to the peculiar genius of each language. From some of
the Australian tribes are derived expressions still more complex, as for
6, _marh-jin-bang-ga-gudjir-gyn_, half the hands and 1; and for 15,
_marh-jin-belli-belli-gudjir-jina-bang-ga_, the hand on either side and
half the feet.[130] The Mare tribe, one of the numerous island tribes of
Melanesia,[131] required for a translation of the numeral 38, which occurs
in John v. 5, "had an infirmity thirty and eight years," the
circumlocution, "one man and both sides five and three." Such expressions,
curious as they seem at first thought, are no more than the natural
outgrowth of systems built up by the slow and tedious process which so
often obtains among primitive races, where digit numerals are combined in
an almost endless v