These wrestling rites are carried out amongst nearly all the Ibo in the Division, though held in greatest importance among the Ikwerri. The same ceremony is customary with the Mbolli, whose head chief told us: ‘When the season comes round for the festival of Mbiencha,[21] we make sacrifice to her of fowls and goats. After the sacrifice has been made, we start wrestling. We do this for children, farms and health.’ One evening, during our stay at Elele, we heard the sound of a far-off tom-tom, beaten with a queer insistent call. The method of playing was new to us, so without a word to any one we set out to investigate. There was no need to ask the way, since it was easy enough to follow the beat of the drum. This led through the market-place along the Omo Dioga road; then, after a sharp turn to the right, we found ourselves in an open space, upon one side of which trees tossed dark branches against a sky of scuttling cloud. The moon, nearing her third quarter, was climbing up the heavens, shedding a cloud of misty silver radiance upon the scene beneath. By a fortunate chance our shoes fell soundlessly upon the soft sand; so we stole in unnoticed, shadows amid a multitude of shadows which flitted to and fro ‘now in glimmer and now in gloom’--in swaying, everchanging lines of a dance impossible to describe. My companions were wearing white, as was nearly every woman and most of the men present. The latter mostly wore long flowing Hausa robes, bought or imitated from the fashion set by Chief Ododo, the enterprising Hausa who, following in the steps of a mighty elephant-hunter of his race, settled here and made himself chief of the town. At once, on realising what was going forward, we slipped into a pool of shadow, cast, it seemed, expressly for our convenience in a spot where we could see everything but ourselves passed for a while unnoticed.