The king had now ample revenge of all the Moorish leaders who had reduced his father to such extremities, excepting Joram, who had driven the king from his hiding-place on mount Tsalem, and forced him to cross the Tacazzé on foot, with equal danger of being drowned or taken. This leader had, much against his will, been detained from the last battle, but, hoping to be still in time, was advancing by forced marches. The king, informed of his route, detached a party of his army to meet him before the news of the battle could reach him. They having placed them selves in ambush, he fell into it with his army, and was cut to pieces: this completed Claudius’s account with his father’s enemies. During the late war with Gragnè, the provinces of Tigré and Siré had been the principal seat of the war. They were immediately in the way between Dembea, Masuah, and the other Moorish posts upon the Red Sea; the enemy had crossed them in all directions, and a proportionable devastation had been the consequence. Gragnè had burnt Axum, and destroyed all the churches and convents in Tigré. The king, now delivered from this enemy, had applied seriously to repair the ravages which had been made in the country. For this purpose he marched with a small army towards Axum, intending afterwards an expedition against the Galla. It was in the 13th year of the reign of Claudius, while he was at Siré, that there happened a very remarkable eclipse of the sun, which threw both court and army into great consternation. The prophets and diviners, ignorant monks of the desert, did not let slip so favourable an opportunity of increasing their consequence by augmenting this panic, and declaring this eclipse to portend nothing less than the renewal of the Moorish war. The year, however, passed in tranquillity and peace. Two old women, relations of the king, are said to have died; and it was in this great calamity that these diviners were to look for the completion of their prophecies. It is from this, however, that I have taken an opportunity to compare and rectify the dates of the principal transactions in the Abyssinian history. Siré, where the king then resided, was a point very favourable for this application; for, in my journey from Masuah to Gondar, I had settled the latitude and longitude of that town by many observations. On the 22d of January 1770, at night, by a medium of different passages of stars over the meridian, and by an observation of the sun the noon of the following day, I found the latitude to be 14° 4´ 35´´ north, and the evening of the 23d, I observed an emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter, and by this I concluded the longitude of Siré to be 38° 0´ 15´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich.