Two more solid huts.
p. [166].
Returning from a day's shooting, if they have had luck, my good friends do not trouble themselves much over counting the heads of game they have brought home. They will perhaps begin by placing their victims in groups of neer (three) until they amount to three threes but should the number exceed nine they simply declare them to be jeho e (many) and do not care about knowing anything more precise as they are satisfied at the fact that they, and any of their relations who like to partake of the feast, can live upon game until it is all finished.
Many times I have amused myself by asking a prolific father or mother how many children they had. My friends would get as far as three but then becoming confused would beg me to count them for myself, and their offspring had to pass in front of me whilst they called each by name, for example: Roy (boy) No (boy) Taynah (girl) Po lo (boy) Tay lep (girl) Betah (girl).
Counting them upon my fingers I would tell the parent or parents that they were six, to which they agreed with:
"If you say they are six, they are six".
It is more difficult still for the Sakais to count time. They imagine pretty nearly what hour it is by the position of the sun overhead or from the various sounds which come from the forest announcing, as I have already said, morning, noon, and evening, and during the night the crescendo and diminuendo of the wild beasts' roaring proclaim the hours before and after midnight.
The shortest measure of time that the Sakais understand is that employed in smoking a cigarette.
They observe, although not with much precision, the phases of the moon that they gladly greet at her appearance but they do not feel any curiosity in knowing where she has gone and where she remains when they do not enjoy her soft light at night and during their dances.
The flowering of certain plants and the ripening of certain fruits gives the Sakai a faint idea of the longest period of time they are capable of imagining and which is about equal to our year. The seasons, which cannot here be recognized by diversity of temperature, are distinguished by the gathering and storing away of those fruits that supply them with food at regular intervals of time, such as the durian season, that of the buà pra, the dukon and the giù blo lol.