We were more fortunate, mostly on account of the energy displayed by the interpreter, Chief G. A. Yellow, a man of unusual intelligence, to whom the reason of our enquiries had been explained and who was far-sighted enough to wish to aid them by every means in his power. By his persuasion an old chief was induced to come forward and give somewhat more information. According to his account the name of the structure was Njokku Mbari, and it was erected in honour of a great ancestor, long dead, named Njokku and his wife Mbafor. The white figure at the top of the ladder on the right of the building represented Njokku himself and, as the chief artlessly pointed out, the birds upon the rungs of the ladder showed that this was the road by which the spirit of the dead man had climbed to his place in the sky, whence he now ruled as a great chief. The fact that he was painted white signified that he was no longer an earth child but had passed to the ghost realm, from whence he watched over his descendants who brought offerings at certain times of the year in order that he might be gently disposed towards them and grant plentiful harvests. As mentioned elsewhere, there is little doubt that the word Njokku is the same as that in use on the Nile, where Jok is the Dinka appellation for ancestral spirits and the Lango name for God. On the testimony of a considerable number of Ibo we learned that no Mbari house is built save at the orders of, and in honour of, one of the great deities worshipped throughout the Etche country and Owerri District, namely Ala, Amade Onhia, Otaminni (the genius of the Otaminni River) called, by the priest of his principal shrine at the Etche town of Opioro, ‘The Lover of Ale,’ and Oloba, a spirit living in the Owerri bush. So far as we could hear, the cult of the latter is quite local. [Illustration: FIG. 5. Clay figure of Ale in an Ibo Mbari house] The more than life-sized figure, facing the principal entrance to the enclosure, was explained by the same chief as that of the ancestress Mbafor, with her small girl-piccan on her knee. It was, he said, the head priest of Ale, the Earth Goddess, whose shrine is close to the Mbari house, who ordered the erection of the building, chose out those who were to raise it and himself directed every detail of decoration. There seemed, however, reason to believe that the figures of the so-called ancestors Mbafor and Njokku really represented Ale and Amade Onhia, regarded, in many parts, as consorts and jointly responsible for the crops. The resemblance between the figures of the deities, as here shown, and those admittedly meant to depict the Earth Goddess and Thunder God in other Mbari houses, is so striking as surely to be more than a mere matter of coincidence.