As soon as the armies came in presence of each other, Jacob offered the governor battle. But no sooner did the impostor’s troops see the eagerness with which the small but chosen band rushed upon them, than they fled and dispersed; and though Sela Christos had taken every precaution to cut off the pretended Jacob from his usual sculking places, it was not possible to overtake or apprehend him; for he arrived in safety in one of the highest and most inaccessible mountains of the district, whence he looked down on Sela Christos and his army without apprehension, having behind him a retreat to the more distant and less known mountains of Hamazen, should his enemies press him further. As long as Sela Christos remained with his little army in that country, the impostor Jacob continued on the highest part of the mountains, accompanied only by two or three of his most intimate friends, who being people whose families dwelt in the plain below, brought him constant intelligence of what passed there. Sela Christos, wishing by all means to engage the enemy, marched into a considerable plain called _Mai-aquel_; but, seeing on every side the top of each mountain guarded by troops of soldiers, he was afraid he had advanced too far; and, apprehensive lest he should be inclosed in the midst of a multitude so posted, he began to think how he could best make his retreat before he was surrounded by so numerous enemies. But they no sooner saw his intention by the movement of his army, than, leaving their leader as a spectator above, they fell on all sides upon Sela Christos’s troops, who, having no longer any safety but in their arms, began to attack the hill that was next them, which they stormed as they would do a castle. Finding the small resistance that each of these posts made, the governor divided his small army into so many separate bodies, leaving his cavalry in the plain below, who, without fighting, were only employed in slaughtering those his troops had dislodged from their separate posts. The day after, the impostor assembling his scattered troops, retreated towards the sea into the territory of Hamazen, between the country of the Baharnagash and the mountains of the Habab. Sela Christos, finding that, while he pursued his victory in these distant parts, the spirit of rebellion increased nearer home, resolved to inform the king his brother of the unpromising state of his affairs in Tigré, and the great necessity there was of his presence there. Nor did Socinios lose a moment after receiving this intelligence from Sela Christos, although it had found him, in one respect, very ill prepared for such an undertaking; for he had sent all his horse from Coga upon an expedition against the Shangalla and Gongas, nations on the north-west border of this kingdom; so that, when he marched from Wainadega, his cavalry amounted to 530 men only, besides a small reinforcement brought by Emana Christos, governor of Amhara.