Tesfos took a post very likely to distress us, as he had more than 300 musquetry with him. He sat down with horse and foot in the middle of the valley before us, with part of his musquetry posted upon the skirts of the mountain Belessen on one side, and part on the top of that long, even hill, dividing the valley from the river Mariam. Over his camp, like a citadel, is the rock that projects into the valley, from which the peasants of Mariam-Ohha had thrown the stones when we were returning to our camp after the last battle. Upon this rock Tesfos had placed a multitude of women and servants, who began to build strawhuts for themselves, as if they intended to stay there for some time, though there was still plenty of the female sex below with the camp. Indeed, I never remember to have seen so many women in proportion to any army whatever, no not even in our own.
If Tesfos had been long in coming, he was resolved, now he was come, to make up for his lost time, as he was not a mile and a half from our camp, and could see our horses go down to water, either at Deg-Ohha or Mariam; that same day at two o'clock, his horse attacked our men at watering, killed some servants, and took several horses. This behaviour of Tesfos was taken as a defiance to Kefla Yasous in particular, and to the army in general.
There was no person in the whole army, of any rank whatever, so generally beloved as Kefla Yasous; he was looked upon by the soldiers as their father. He was named by the Ras to the government of Samen, but had failed, as we have already stated, in dispossessing Ayto Tesfos, whose: disorderly march at broad mid-day, so near our army, the
