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 the roast
of Old England, but any meat, from a field-rat to a hippopotamus.
He boasts that he has slain with his own hand upwards of a
hundred gorillas and anthropoid apes, and, since the demand arose
in Europe, he has supplied Mr. R.B.N. Walker and others with an
average of one per month, including a live youngster; probably
most, if not all, of them were killed by his "bushmen," of whom
he can command about a dozen.

Forteune began by receiving his "dash," six fathoms of "satin
cloth," tobacco, and pipes. After inspecting my battery, he
particularly approved of a smooth-bored double-barrel (Beattie of
Regent Street) carrying six to the pound. Like all these people,
he uses an old and rickety trade-musket, and, when lead is
wanting, he loads it with a bit of tile: as many gorillas are
killed with tools which would hardly bring down a wild cat, it is
evident that their vital power cannot be great. He owned to
preferring a charge of twenty buckshot to a single ball, and he
received with joy a little fine gunpowder, which he compared
complimentarily with the blasting article, half charcoal withal,
to which he was accustomed.