164 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
desire for his services. He then explained that his 
little corps of five hundred men had been magnified 
into a force of ten times its real strength, by re- 
assembling within the forest as soon as they had 
broken off, and mounting the hill again, upon the 
opposite side ; so that they might as easily have 
been made to assume the appearance of a hundred 
thousand. This circumstance, being reported to 
Dherm-ben-Nassuk, by no means diminished his 
favour towards Yakoob Lais ; on the contrary, he 
replied that the ingenuity displayed by the manoeuvre 
was well worth ten thousand men, even of such 
choice troops as w^ere those of the bandit. 
Yakoob Lais was forthwith raised to the title of 
Nawab, and promoted to the command of ten thou- 
sand cavalry. He soon afterwards became com- 
mander-in-chief, and ultimately, upon the death of 
Dherm-ben-Nassuk, realized all his dreams of glory, 
by succeeding to the government of Sehistan. He 
reigned in absolute sovereignty for a period of eleven 
years ; and has left among the historians of that time 
a character distinguished for acute intelligence, for 
undaunted courage, for moderation and temperance, 
for inflexible justice, and for unbounded generosity. 
Having greatly extended the dominion of his pre- 
decessor, by a career of active enterprise, and the 
extraordinary success which attended all his under- 
takings, one of his last acts was, to lay the founda- 
tion of a city upon the bank of the river Guadavery, 
