In the grove at Ibodo beneath one of the trees, peeled, short-branched wands--the symbol of lightning--were still standing, and we were told that formerly many such had been set up in other spots. When these rods decay, the power of the Thunder God is said to pass from them into the nearest tree. Once drawn within the many-forked branches, the ‘mana’ of Amad’ongha fades not with the fading of its first frail tenement, but is drawn into the vegetation around, growing and spreading with each new season’s boughs. At the far end of the sacred grove stands a tree such as we had never seen elsewhere, of which the crowded panicles of single petaled flowers, deepest crimson in colour, swayed to and fro in the breeze amid dark quivering leaves, or fell earthward in showers, like drops of new drawn blood. One night, at the beginning of the tornado season, we were sleeping in the neighbouring rest-house, when a storm arose with the appalling suddenness usual at this time of year. The wind tore at the frail palm-leaf roofs, while rain lashed in through open window- and door-frames, flash after flash was followed, with scarce an interval, by crash and roar so deafening that for a long time all other sounds were drowned in the awful tumult. As the storm began to pass away, another sound made itself heard in the lengthening intervals. Each lightning gleam was followed by a burst of trumpeting, as though the followers of the storm god had come together undaunted by the force of the tempest to hold a play in honour of their great deity. It is impossible to give any idea of the impressiveness of this act of worship. From out the impenetrable darkness, between long lines of rain, like a sword from its scabbard leapt the dazzling flash. The branches of the sacred grove moaned and swayed, bitumen dark against this more than daylight brilliance; while, from beneath their shade or from the neighbourhood of the shrine, each burst of flame was answered by a blare of savage trumpets, the sound of which merged into the roll of the sequent thunder. So long as the storm lasted the strange music continued, broken now and again by the cries of the terrified cattle, which rose in chorus from countless byres and were hardly distinguishable at times from the rude horns blown by their owners. Save for the fact that the outer colonnade, which gives accommodation to further groups of figures in Owerri Mbari houses, is absent, wholly or in part, from many of the Etche shrines, the buildings are practically identical in type. Many groups are to be found, save for the smallest of details, exactly reproduced in each, and it is owned that freedom of intercourse between the sexes is allowed in the cults of both Ale and Amade Onhia at certain seasons, with the idea that this will have the effect of increasing fruitfulness not only among the human inhabitants of the town but also in farm and byre.