Some few weeks later, in passing through the town of Ebubu in the extreme east of Degama District inhabited by that strange and hitherto unstudied tribe, the Mbolli, we came across a shrine of a type such as we had never before seen. It is carved from a solid block of wood some four feet high, set in a carefully smoothed clay base, swathed round the bottom by folds of white cloth and surmounted by an inverted crescent. The name of this Juju is Obo Esa, _i.e._ in Mbolli dialect four hundred yams. The reason given for this name is that only full chiefs have the right to erect such a fetish, to which they must sacrifice each harvest time baskets containing the given number of yams. It was explained that Obo Esa is a male Juju--a statement borne out by the appearance of the symbolic pillar--and to him, at the cutting of new farms and digging of fresh yams, living sacrifices must be brought and slain so that their blood is shed upon the clay base, whence it trickles down over the seven little moon-shaped depressions to the thirsty earth beneath. These small half moons may well typify the period during which the yams are confided to the bosom of Mother Ale--called Nkike by the Mbolli--while the great crescent, surmounting the pillar, probably represents that of the month of September during which the harvest festival is usually held. Considering the close connection between the waxing moon and the powers of fertility, it is not without significance that personified representations of the crescent are to be found in each Mbari house, especially when it is remembered that the shrine of the Earth Goddess is always close by and that only after consultation with her priest is the building begun and carried through. Again, although we were expressly told, as already related, that the chief figure at Omo Dim did not represent either of the principal deities, but only a deified ancestress, yet a man present volunteered the information--it is true, in a highly superior manner--that some old and very ignorant people held them to be those of Amad’ongha and Ale. So stupid, however, were such that they even believed the white child, on the knee of the Earth Mother, to be the moon! As if any but the most foolish could look upon the moon as a daughter of Earth!