swagger into the other world.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

A DAY AT TANTAH.

"Tantah, a town of Lower Egypt, in the Delta province and 5 miles S. W.
of Menoof, on the Damietta branch of the Nile. It has a government
school."

This, and nothing more, from the _Gazetteer_. It does not promise much,
and yet Tantah is an important place, and, in spite of the _Gazetteer_,
is _not_ on the Damietta branch, but in the very heart of the Delta,
among the smaller water-courses. On this account it is not often visited
by travellers.

And first I must tell how I came to go to Tantah. In the year 1867 the
sloop-of-war ----, to which I was attached, was cruising in the Levant,
touching now and again at Canea or at Suda Bay to see how the Turks and
the Cretans were getting on with their war, or at Larneka to lend the
"influence of the flag" to that pleasant gentleman, General di Cesnola,
then in the full tide of archaeological research in Cyprus. Sometimes we
were sipping fruity wine in Samos or eating "lumps of delight" and
smoking Latakia in Smyrna; and generally we represented the United
States in these uttermost parts with great dignity.

One day while at Smyrna we received orders by the mail-steamer to go at
once to Jaffa, and there afford assistance to certain "distressed
Americans" then sojourning on the Plain of Sharon. We already knew
something about them. These people were the remains--the _sediment_, so
to speak--of a certain "American colony" which had come out from New
England, principally from Maine and New Hampshire, a year or two before,
being the latest crusaders on record, and "bound to occupy the land" on
the way to the Holy City. They had some kind of queer, fanatical belief,
which had been fostered by their leader, one Adams, a long, raw-boned,
bearded Yankee, until they sold their farms or shops and tools of trade,
and placed the proceeds in a common stock under the charge of their
prophet and leader. This Adams was said to have formerly been an actor,
and then a Methodist minister in St. Louis, a Mormon (some people said)
after that; and finally he had invented a creed and founded a sect of
his own. It does not speak very well for the vaunted New England
shrewdness and intelligence that near two hundred and fifty persons of
all ages cast in their lot with him, or, rather, cast in their lots for
him. He chartered a vessel, freighted it with provisions, seed for
planting, agricultural implements and