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The soldier however, is very plucky and well earns his twenty-one cents each day, and the one franc twenty-five cents a month which is reserved for him. Next day I visit the Catholic Mission of Ibembo and am received by Father Benin who is in charge in the absence of Mgr. Derikx.
There is a good path to Bima and Bomokandi and I was thinking of taking this ten day's walk when an attack of fever caused me to change my plans again. While still at Buta Mgr. Derikx arrived. He was on a tour of his diocese and expected to be travelling for a year. I was very pleased to see him and was bound to confess that all he had told me of the Congo on the voyage out was strictly accurate.
Derikx places a particularly pugnacious fox-terrier under the basket work of his chair the little animal being literally sat upon by the dignitary of the Church. The Residency is a large brick building situated on a low hill and raised above the ground, the space beneath being enclosed and loop-holed, thus forming a small fort. The gardens are particularly pretty and well kept.
There seems however, to be no doubt that the native chiefs in the past mutilated both the living and dead as punishment for crime. Mgr. Derikx told me that he had heard of a case where a chief had ordered that the hand of his own son should be cut off because he had committed adultery with one of his numerous wives.
The Congo State on the other hand, has only recently become sufficiently prosperous to attract attention. One of the passengers dressed as a Catholic Priest, proved a veritable mine of information. This was Mgr. Derikx, Prefet Apostolique of Uele in the Upper Congo. He had had five years' experience of the country and was well versed in all its institutions and ways.
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