The Bushman has no number word that will express for him anything higher than 2; but with the assistance of his fingers he gropes his way on as far as 10.

The Veddas, the Andamans, the Guachi, the Botocudos, the Eskimos, and the thousand and one other tribes which furnish such scanty numeral systems, almost all proceed with more or less readiness as far as their fingers will carry them.

As a matter of fact, this limit is frequently extended to 20; the toes, the fingers of a second man, or a recount of the savage's own fingers, serving as a tale for the second 10.

Allusion is again made to this in a later chapter, where the subject of counting on the fingers and toes is examined more in detail.
In saying that a savage can count to 10, to 20, or to 100, but little idea is given of his real mental conception of any except the smallest numbers.
Want of familiarity with the use of numbers, and lack of convenient means of comparison, must result in extreme indefiniteness of mental conception and almost entire absence of exactness.

The experience of Captain Parry,[47] who found that the Eskimos made mistakes before they reached 7, and of Humboldt,[48] who says that a Chayma might be made to say that his age was either 18 or 60, has been duplicated by all investigators who have had actual experience among savage races.