In the neighbourhood of Mombasa wars, famines, the arrival of white men form epochs of this kind: it is impossible to detect the age of any adult[437]. It is mentioned that the Toradja of the Dutch East Indies sometimes reckon nearly approaching events or events of recent occurrence by the rice-sowing: dates at a more distant past are indicated by mentioning events of most note, such as the death of a great man, an epidemic of small-pox, an important military expedition, a conclusion of peace, the payment of a tax, etc. The people do not reckon their own age, but count that of their children, saying: “When he was born I had my rice-field there, the next year there”, and so on[438]. It is amusing and at the same time instructive to note that precisely the same mode of reckoning was found in Scania at the beginning of the last century. It was a very common thing, says a well-known authority on the folk-lore of this district, for a peasant, when asked how old e. g. his little girl was, to give some such answer as: “She must be four years old, for she is the same age as my brown mare, and she was born when our southern field was a grazing meadow”[439]. The Batak of Sumatra think that a small-pox epidemic returns at intervals of from nine to twelve years, and make use of this belief in reckoning time. On questioning a chief, says a traveller, how old his house was, I was told: “It has existed only for two small-pox epidemics”, by which he meant that it was somewhat more than 24 years old[440]. In Borneo there have occurred two eclipses of the sun during the last half-century. The first of these served as a fixed date in relation to which other events were dated[441]. The Eskimos of Greenland knew up to about the twentieth year how many winters a person had lived, but beyond that they could not go. Sometimes however they used as epochs from which to calculate _pellesingvoak_, ‘the little priest’, i. e. the arrival of Egede in the country, or the arrival or departure of other well-known Europeans, or the founding of Godthaab and other colonies; they would say that this or that person was born at the coming or departure of such and such a person, or when eggs were collected, seals caught, etc.[442]. The Caffres rarely give the proper length of past or future periods of time, and when they do so the period is never of more than a few months’ duration. Otherwise it is their custom to determine the date at which this or that event took place by reference to a contemporaneous event of greater importance[443]. The Lapps of Västerbotten reckon their age by the reindeer, e. g. when this or that _aldo_ (= female with calf) was born. Formerly they never went farther back in counting than the previous year. When they had to give the date of an important event they referred to the time at which some specially fine female reindeer was born[444].