On the morrow after the battle, three messengers arrived from Gusho, Powussen, and Ayabdar, and each had a separate audience of the King and Ras, before whom they all three severally declared, that their masters desired to continue in allegiance to him their king, Tecla Haimanout, but under this condition only, that Ras Michael should be sent to his government of Tigrè, never more to return. They endeavoured to persuade the king also to take the sense of his army, the majority of which, they asserted, were ready to abandon him. If Michael should agree to return to Tigrè, they offered to carry the king to Gondar, place him in his palace, and allow him to choose his own ministers, and govern for the future after his own ideas. This, indeed, was the universal wish, and I did not see what Ras Michael could have done, had he adopted it; but fear, or gratitude, or both, restrained the young king from such a measure; and the messengers left him after a plain declaration, That they had endeavoured all in their power to save him, and he must now abide the consequences, for they washed their hands of them. The rains were now become more frequent, and an epidemical fever had shewn itself in the rebel army on the plain; every consideration, therefore, seemed to persuade a speedy decision, but the consequences of the last engagement seemed to have damped the spirit of the rebels, without having much raised that of the king's army. In fact, the days were dark and wet, and the nights cold, circumstances in which no Abyssinian chooses to fight. The army was thinly cloathed, or not cloathed at all, and encamped on high ground, where fuel, though it had not failed them yet, must soon have done so.