“His first cares were directed to adorn and civilize the capital. Under his orders, enforced by personal superintendence, the palace commenced by his father was soon brought to completion. But he added, what probably his father would hardly have thought of, a long row of warehouses, the dependencies and property of the same palace; next he built a market-place consisting of about eighty shops or magazines, destined for public commerce and trade, and lastly constructed a large mosque for the official prayers of Friday. Round the palace, and in many other parts of the town, he opened streets, dug wells, and laid out extensive gardens, besides strengthening the old fortifications all round and adding new ones. At the same time he managed to secure at once the fidelity and the absence of his dangerous uncle by giving him charge of those military expeditions which best satisfied the restless energy of Obeyd. The first of these wars was directed, I know not on what pretext, against Kheybar. But as Telal intended rather to enforce submission than to inflict ruin, he associated with Obeyd in the military command his own brother Meta’ab, to put a check on the ferocity of the former. Kheybar was conquered, and Telal sent thither, as governor in his name, a young man of Ha’yel, prudent and gentle, whom I subsequently met when he was on a visit at the capital. “Not long after, the inhabitants of Kaseem, weary of Wahabee tyranny, turned their eyes toward Telal, who had already given a generous and inviolable asylum to the numerous political exiles of that district. Secret negotiations took place, and at a favorable moment the entire uplands of that province—after a fashion not indeed peculiar to Arabia—annexed themselves to the kingdom of Shomer by universal and unanimous suffrage. Telal made suitable apologies to the Nedjean monarch, the original sovereign of the annexed district; he could not resist the popular wish; it had been forced on him, etc.—but Western Europe is familiar with the style. Feysul felt the inopportuneness of a quarrel with the rapidly growing power to which he himself had given origin only a few years before, and, after a wry face or two, swallowed the pill. Meanwhile Telal knowing the necessity of a high military reputation, both at home and abroad, undertook in person a series of operations against Teyma’ and its neighborhood, and at last against the Djowf itself. Everywhere his arms were successful, and his moderation in victory secured the attachment of the vanquished themselves.