Prince Paul at once gathered together a goodly crowd of fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, cousins and connections.  A large and loud-voiced dame, “Gozeli,” swore that she was his “proper Ngwe,” being one of his numerous step mas, and she would not move without a head, or three leaves, of tobacco.  Hotaloya was his brother; Mesdames Azizeh and Asunye declared themselves his sisters, and so all.  My little stock of goods began visibly to shrink, when I informed the greedy applicants that nothing beyond a leaf of tobacco and a demi verre of tafia would be given until I had seen my way to work.  Presently appeared the chief huntsman appointed by Roi Denis to take charge of me, he was named Fortuna, a Spanish name corrupted to Forteune.  A dash was then prepared for his majesty and for Prince Paul.  I regret to say that this young nobleman ended his leave-taking by introducing a pretty woman, with very neat hands and ankles and a most mutine physiognomy, as his sister, informing me that she was also my wife pro temp.  She did not seem likely to coiffer Sainte Catherine, and here she is.

The last thing the prince did was to carry off, without a word of leave, the mission boat and the three Kru-boys, whom he kept two days.  I was uneasy about these fellows, who, hating and fearing the Gaboon “bush,” are ever ready to bolt.

Forteune and Hotaloya personally knew Mpolo (Paul du Chaillu), and often spoke to me of his prowess as a chasseur and his knowledge of their tongue.  But reputation as a linguist is easily made in these regions by speaking a few common sentences.  The gorilla-hunter evidently had only a colloquial acquaintance with the half-dozen various idioms of the Mpongwe and Mpangwe (Fan) Bakele, Shekyani, and Cape Lopez people.  Yet, despite verbal inaccuracies, his facility of talking gave him immense advantages over other whites, chiefly in this, that the natives would deem it useless to try the usual tricks upon travellers.

Forteune is black, short, and “trapu;” curls of the jettiest lanugo invest all his outward man; bunches of muscle stand out from his frame like the statues of Crotonian Milo; his legs are bandy; his hands and feet are large and patulous, and he wants only a hunch to make an admirable Quasimodo.  He has the frank and open countenance of a sportsman—­I had been particularly warned by the Plateau folk about his skill in cheating and lying.  Formerly a cook at the Gaboon, he is a man of note in his tribe, as the hunter always is; he holds the position of a country gentleman, who can afford to write himself M.F.H.; he is looked upon as a man of valour; he is admired by the people, and he is adored by his wives—­one of them at once took up her station upon the marital knee.  Perhaps the Nimrod of Mbata is just a little henpecked—­the Mpongwe mostly are—­and I soon found out that soigner les femmes is the royal road to getting on with the men.  He supplies the village with “beef,” here meaning not