All lodges of this club as yet visited show a peculiar development in the highly conventionalised animal head-dresses which are worn for plays. In the Otu Obukele (house of Obukele or Obukere) a big shed made of solid wooden posts, at the Abuan town of Okobaw, some head-dresses of unusual type were found; among them representations of antelopes, porcupines and the ‘increase of the Sky people,’ typifying the sky world above that of men. Round the lodge at Obelle Oduaha were seven phallic shrines six of which were of the usual pillar type, while the seventh showed a featureless head, arms and legs indicated in the roughest manner, and only the distinctly feminine organs modelled with any care. The position of these shrines in close proximity to the house of Obukere worshipped with the avowed purpose of increasing fertility in man, animals and crops, can hardly be regarded as without significance. Within the house were two objects of interest--a xylophone in the shape of a canoe manned by eight figures, stated by the chief to have been specially designed to express ‘joy’ and raise feelings of pleasure in those who behold them; and an object which strongly resembled the Ajokko-Ji or king yam shown to us at Oppe, separated by the sacred crocodile swamp from Alessa, and which will be more fully described later on page 99. The drum used at Oduaha to call together the members of the Obukere Club was said to have been brought from Abua and to have been made for the Sekapu Club, connected with the spirits of fish, crocodiles and--in this part of the world--land beasts. It may be only a whim of the carver that the figure of the woman, depicted with rounded body as a sign of pregnancy, should be joined to that of the sacred crocodile. Drums of similar type were later found among Abaw Ibo. [Illustration: FIG. 16. Figure in Mbari House, Umoyo] [Illustration: FIG. 18. Clay figure of Amade Onhia in an Ibo Mbari house] [Illustration: FIG. 17. Wrestling scene (’Mba) in shrine of Amade Onhia and Ale. Shrine drummers on the right] IV MBARI HOUSES (_continued_) In nearly all towns of importance in the Etche country, elaborate Mbari shrines are to be found, built in honour of the Thunder God. In most, just within the principal entrance, may be seen the seated figure of the deity, white from head to foot, and bearing in the right hand a sword, spear or bayonet, and in the left an imitation of one of the old stone axe-heads, thought by natives to be thunder bolts, or one of the long iron sceptre-rattles, or possibly another sword or dagger. By his side sits his consort, to whom various names are given, most of them apparently synonyms for the Earth Goddess Ale, Ala, Ana or Aja. At Ibodo we were told by one informant that the figure represented Ala--Bride of the Bladed Thunder. The more general Ibo idea as to her identity was confided by the head priest, Achongwa by name, to chief G. A. Yellow: ‘That,’ said he, ‘is Omu Ngwaw, wife of Amad’ongha.’