"I tested Longway and also several of the Blacks together at before them, but could not get them to count in their language above three—piama, labaima, damma. They used the word nurra also, apparently for all higher numbers. It was curious to see their procedure when I put a heap of five or six objects before them. They separated them into groups of two, or two and one, and pointing to the heaps successively said, “labaima, labaima, piama,” “two,” “ two,” “ one.” Though another of my guides had been long with the Whites he had little idea of counting. After he had picked up two dozen birds for me and seen them packed away, I asked him how many there were in the tin: he said Six. I wish I had paid more attention to the language of these Gudangs. No doubt amongst such people language changes with remarkable rapidity, especially where, as here, tribes are mixed, and some of the words at least seem to have changed since MacGillivray’s time.The Blacks are wonderfully forgetful, and seem never to carry an idea long in their heads. One day when Longway was out with me he kept constantly repeating to himself “two shilling,” a sum I had promised him if I shot a Rifle-bird, and he constantly reminded me of it, evidently with his thoughts full of the idea. After the day was over, and we were near home, he suddenly left me and disappeared: he had been taken with a sudden desire to smoke his bamboo, and had gone by a short cut to the camp. When I found him there he seemed astonished, and to have forgotten about his day’s pay altogether.The Blacks spend what little money they get in biscuit at the store. And they know that for a florin they ought to get more biscuit than for a shilling, but that is all. Food is their greatest desire. Their use of English is most amusing, especially that of the word “fellow.” “This feller gin, this feller gin, this feller boy,” said Longway, when I asked whether some young Blacks crouched by the fire were boys or girls. They apply the term also to all kinds of inanimate objects. There are several graves of Blacks near Somerset. I asked Longway what became of the Black fellows when they died; he said “Flyaway,” and that they became White men."