At its installation, about twelve years ago, the Abaw doctors held a great ‘smelling out,’ and, in consequence, decreed that the epidemic was caused by the witchcraft of the six _richest_ women of the town, who must therefore be put to death and their property be made over to the medicine men! When informed of their doom, the victims refused to acquiesce and were therefore beaten to death in the market-place. The number of heads, modelled at irregular intervals over the pillar, corresponds to that of the victims thus slaughtered at the inauguration ceremonies--four at the back and two in front, between the sacred crocodiles. All are liberally smeared with blood poured upon the heads and trickling downward. This is the only example known to us at the time in which an Ibudu is so represented as to show the dual creative forces, male and female, combined so as to form a single pillar. Many Ibudu were later seen among the Abaw Ibo of Kwale District, where this particular type of symbol would seem to have reached its greatest development. The phallic figures, above-mentioned, are, however, by no means the only examples met with in West Africa of the mingling, in one object, of male and female symbols. For instance, the emblem of the greatest of all Ekoi Jujus, Eja, unmistakably combines the two. Here, the phallus, represented with the uttermost pains and fidelity, is the sign of the harvest god himself, while the bowl-like object to which it is attached represents the womb of his wife Ekumoke. The united symbol stands upon a base formed of wide-open human jaws.[16] Among the Ekoi, both in the South Cameroons and Southern Nigeria, as indeed throughout the greater part of the West Coast generally, a pot or calabash is regarded as a feminine symbol, and it is of considerable significance that traces of male semen have been found in no inconsiderable number of the pots set before Ibudu images and in other Juju shrines throughout the Ibo country. This fact is vouched for by a medical officer. In the ritual chant sung by Ekoi at the festival of Eja, which is also the feast of the first fruits, the names of the combined deities are always invoked: Man Eja! I am staying with you. O, I am staying with you! Ekumoke! I am staying with you. O, I am staying with you! Of these two deities it was expressly stated: ‘Eja is male and the most strong. Ekumoke is less strong than Eja; nevertheless without her help he can do nothing.’ During the annual rites a woman was formerly sacrificed and the genital organs cut out and laid in the sacred pot, which contains the ‘medicine’ of the cult. Since the coming of Government it has naturally become increasingly difficult to obtain this necessary ingredient, and it was a matter of grave anxiety on the part of the priest lest the power of the Juju should decrease in consequence.