It is not without significance that the trinity of cone-shaped pillars, with cup-like depressions, raised before the Kalahari Nduen Fobara (ancestral shrines), into which libations to the forefathers are poured every eighth day, are of almost identical type. At Oru-Sangama, an ancient town on a creek leading into the San Bartholomeo River, we came across two of these small cones modelled within a circle, also of clay, beneath the palm-leaf roof of a tiny hut. So like were these to the Eku emblems that we took for granted that the little shrine was but another dwelling-place of one of the manifold representations of Ibudu Omumu, _i.e._ the Ibudu of fertility. Long sojourn in Africa should, however, teach caution even to the most careless enquirer, and we therefore, as always, took the precaution to keep our ideas to ourselves and asked the significance of the symbol. As a result we were told that they represented the Nduen Fobara of a neighbouring house. Our informant added: Some men make three, some two, small pillars for the pouring out of libations to the spirits of their dead. Some again make only one such emblem for the reception of drink offerings. Here no carved images are shown as is usual in rich Kalahari towns; the cones themselves represent the ancestors, except in the case of men of distinction. Considering the peculiar powers thought by many tribes to attach to the phalli of the dead, especially those of warriors or others who excelled in strength or power, as also the Egyptian legend of the birth of Horus--that seed of life, snatched by the widowed Isis from Death himself--it is perhaps not too far fetched an idea to imagine that the likeness of symbol was intended to signify a connection between the physical body of the new-born and the astral shape or ethereal mould, supplied in most cases according to general belief from the ghost realm, where the ancestral shades await reincarnation--by preference in the bodies of those about to be born to the family to which they themselves formerly belonged. [Illustration: FIG. 35. Pillars, carved tusks, and bronze torques. Kalabari Shrine of Awome-Ka-So] Sir James Frazer, in his wonderful _Golden Bough_, tells of sacrificial victims whose phalli were beaten with twigs--not out of cruelty, but with the idea of increasing the powers of virility. Among the Ekkett Ibibio sacred boughs are drawn over the pudenda of warriors while parts are even cut off and buried secretly by the marriage bed, in the byre or on the farm. In this connection it is perhaps worth mentioning that one of the most dreaded of West African tortures, employed upon captives of distinction, was the continued flagellation of the phalli. Chief Igo, of Omo Nelu, gave the following information: