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In that she kept the little ornaments, purchased for her in Tantah by her father, articles of jewelry found in the sand of the desert, and which had perhaps been worn by a daughter of the Pharaohs, and gems that had been taken from the grave of some mummy, where they had lain for thousands of years.
On the day after our arrival, while dining with our consul-general, the great fair then being held at Tantah became the subject of conversation. As most of us had never even heard of Tantah, we were informed that it was a large and flourishing town in the Delta, about halfway between Alexandria and Cairo, where an annual fair the fair of Egypt had been held time out of mind.
You speak as the scha-er sings, whom I once heard when with my father in Tantah. Oh, speak on, sing on, for songs round from your lips!" "If my words are songs, yours are tones of the harp," murmured he. "Oh, tell me, Butheita, where are we going? Who has commanded you to bear me away thus?" "Did you not hear? I obey the commands of my father, who is in Osman Bey's service.
Shall I?" But you must not laugh at me for repeating what the Gavasi sang in Tantah." Without awaiting a reply, she took down the little bagpipe with its bag of goat-skin, and to its shrill accompaniment sang a quaint love-song with an admixture of the comic.
For details of the massacre and its preconcerted character, sec Parl. The events at Alexandria and Tantah made armed intervention inevitable. Nothing could be hoped for from Turkey. The Sultan's special envoy, Dervish Pasha, had arrived in Egypt only a few days before the outbreak; and after that occurrence Abdul Hamid thought fit to send a decoration to Arabi.
We soon reached Tantah, a somewhat important town, to which the fine mosque of Seyd Ahmed Badouy attracts pilgrims twice a year, and the fairs of which are frequented by the caravans. Tantah, from the railway station, for the train does not stop long enough to allow travellers to visit the town, has an animated and picturesque aspect.
In the year 1897, in Tantah, the third largest town in the Delta, there were 130 scholars learning French and but 40 studying English. In 1898 there were 98 at the English classes and but a moiety at the French. The scholastic year 1899, according to the officials of the Public Instruction Department, will see a farther and even more serious decline in the study of the French language.
We reached Tantah before nine o'clock, and emerged from the station under the close inspection of a motley crowd of loafers, to find the day, as usual, splendidly clear and bright, but already too hot for comfort.
Thus spoke the scha-er whom I heard when with my father in Tantah a short time since: `He who approaches the protecting goddess of mankind must fall down in the dust before her, and worship Allah and the saints. "Kneel down, my dromedary, kneel down, my Alpha!" and she draws in her reins, repeating the words in imperious tones. The animal understands her, and sinks gravely upon its knees.
Asses, some of which are daintily harnessed, with saddles of red morocco rising in a boss on the withers, and with headstalls adorned with tufts, and others with an old carpet for a saddle-cloth, were waiting for the travellers who were to stop at Tantah to bear them from the station to the town.
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