"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 lumber for houses, and forthwith sailed for the Holy Land at the head of his followers, intending to sow and reap and prepare for the coming of the nations at the millennium, supposed by the colonists to be near at hand. Such people are apt to be useful so long as their enthusiasm lasts, whatever the motives which prompt them. This even the Turks could see; and a firman had been procured without difficulty, enabling them to erect their houses and to lease and cultivate a certain portion of land, planting American seed-wheat and maize where before grew only _gran turco_, barley, sesamum and anise.