At this very time, the king was informed by a faithful servant, a nobleman of Hadea, that the chief of Gadai had long been meditating mischief, and endeavouring to prevail with the king of Adel to march with his army, while great part of the principal people of Hadea, whom he had seduced, were to fall, on the opposite side, upon Dawaro and Bali.
The king, however, received certain accounts from Adel, that all was quiet there; and inquiring who of his Moorish servants were of the conspiracy in Hadea, he found them to be Goodalu, Alarea, Ditho, Hybo, Ganzè, Saag, Gidibo, Kibben, Gugulé, and Haleb. As there were still forces enough in the province to resist this confederacy, the king, instead of levying an army against them, thought the proper way was to send them a governor, who should divide the interest and strength of the enemy. There was then an uncle of Mihico remaining in exile at Dejan[13], whither he had been sent formerly into banishment at the instance of his nephew, but he still preserved the command of a small district called Bomo, as well as the good inclinations of his own subjects of Gadai, who held his memory in great veneration. The king, therefore, sent for this governor of Bomo, and, setting before him the behaviour of his nephew, he gave him the investiture of his government, with many presents both useful and honourable; and, having ordered some troops from Amhara to attend him, he dismissed him, to punish and expel his nephew from the province of Gadai.
The fair of Adel was nigh, and thither all the inhabitants of Bali and Dawaro go. It was at this time the conspirators of Hadea had agreed to fall upon the provinces; while, probably, those at the fair had been likewise destined to cut off the inhabitants which might be found there. To counteract these designs, the king, by proclamation, expressly forbade any of the inhabitants of Bali or Dawaro to go to the fair, but all to join the governor of Bomo, who no sooner presented himself in his district, than the people of all ranks flocked to him and submitted.
Mihico saw himself undone by this address of the king, of which he was quite uninformed. He fled immediately with his family, endeavouring, if possible, to reach Adel; and having come the length of Bawa Amba, a high mountain, where is one of the narrowest and most difficult passes between the high country and the Kolla, here he strowed about, in different places, all the riches that he had brought along with him, in hopes that his pursuers, wearied by the time they came there, should, by the difficulty of the ground, and the booty everywhere to be found, be induced to proceed no further. But this stratagem did not succeed; for he was so closely followed that he was overtaken and slain, his head, hands, and feet were cut off, and immediately sent to the king, who, after public rejoicings, gave the government of Gadai to the person who first informed him of Mihico’s conspiracy, and confirmed the governor of Bomo in the province of Hadea likewise, which he made hereditary in his family. In order also to be more in readiness to suppress such insurrections for the future, he gave his Christian soldiers lands adjacent to each other, forming a line all along the frontiers of the Mahometan provinces of Bali, Fatigar, Wadge, and Hadea, that they might be ready at an instant to suppress any tumult in the provinces themselves, or resist any incursions from the kingdom of Adel.