march of eleven days on 20 July, to learn that the rainy season (which Castanhoso, as well as the natives, referred to as "winter") made further travel impossible. Cristóvão would not allow his men to pass the months in idleness, employing them in constructing sledges for the bombards and in raiding nearby villages that had accepted Ahmed Gragn's rule. He also learned from the Bahr negus that Queen Seble Wongel was camped nearby on top of a mountain that Ahmed had not been able to reduce by siege. (R.S. Whiteway identifies this mountain with Debre Damo.) With one hundred men, he marched to the mountain, and invited Queen Seble Wongel to join him; she did so, bringing her entourage of thirty men and fifty women, all of whom were received with careful ceremony. Once the rains ended, the Portuguese continued south. After months of being slowed by their equipment, Da Gama decided to leave half of it in an arsenal on Debre Damo. His army passed the Church of St. Romanos around Christmas of 1541, and celebrated Epiphany in the province of Agame (January 1542). Gama's first encounter with the Imam's troops was 2 February 1542 at the Battle of Bacente, which Whiteway located on Amba Senayt in Haramat. The invaders had taken possession of a hill from which they made raids into the countryside. Although Queen Seble Wongel advised Gama to march around this hill, advising him to wait until her son Emperor Gelawdewos could arrive from Shewa and join him, he believed that failing to engage the invaders would make the natives distrust his troops, and that they would then stop bringing food and supplies. Fortunately, the engagement was an unquestioned success, and Gama's men took the hill despite superior enemy numbers, losing only eight men. At the end of February, two Portuguese arrived from a ship anchored at Massawa, escorted by six people native to the area. Gama responded with a detachment of forty men to make contact, obtain supplies, and exchange news. This group failed to reach the ship before it sailed, and the only outcome was that these soldiers and their captain were absent for the next battle, which was against Ahmad Gragn himself. As Queen Seble Wongel had feared, the events at Bacente alerted Ahmad that a hostile army had entered the area, and he marched north to confront it, meeting Gama at Jarte