[cotsworth] the need OF A "RATIONAL ALMANAC" 218 



knowing that his subjects, then scattered through Europe, Africa and 

 West Asia, had to make long journeys in slow stages, depending upon 

 the moon entirely as their indicator for the date, after they had been 

 warned to prepare for the new era's inauguration when they noticed 

 the lowest sunrise and sunset at the solstice, — just as ■!:he Eed Indians 

 and the Hudson's Bay traders had. to do when Europeans first came to 

 America. 



"We know that the Indians did so during our lifetime, as their 

 moon-sticks, now in my possession, prove, and their huge mounds in 

 the Mississippi Valley indicate. 



HiSTOKY OF OUR AlMANAO. 



When the Eoman Caesars fixed the irregular lengths of our months, 

 Northern Europe was being colonized, like Canada now is. Between 

 three thousand and four thousand years before, the wise Egyptians had 

 by their stupendous efforts in building pyramids Avon the most valuable 

 Recret of the length of the solar year, at such a cost that they naturally 

 kept it secret (as also did the Babylonians and Chinese, etc.), knowing 

 that the lives of their people depended upon intense culture of the two 

 narrow strips of land between the JSTile and the sandy hills, which for 

 more than a thousand miles up the meridian confine the fertilizing 

 waters of that river to its narrow valley. Within that area three crops 

 per year could be grown without any manure when they knew the right 

 crops to sow and precise days of the year for each agricultural oper- 

 ation, in that constant sunny climate, by simply measuring the daily 

 variations in the length of pyramid shadows as shown, after investiga- 

 tions throughout Egypt, on page 78 of my book.^ The usefulness of 

 that knowledge leaked out to Southern Europe through Greek traders, 

 and it is significant that Julius Csesar obtained the advice of the great 

 astronomer from Egypt's University at Alexandria to arrange the most 

 useful principle of -fixity in the Eoman months and years then drifting 

 with the moon. 



Europeans then generally registered months by the moon's phases, 

 like the Eed Indians of the iN'orth-West still do by their Spring Festival 

 beginning their twelve-moons year with the first new moon after the first 

 thunder, as I found the Sarcees doing. The next five moons counted 

 on one hand register Sarcee summer moons, and after the Autumn 

 OFestival moon, the five winter moons are counted on the other hand. 

 Before they were thus able to count twelve, they tallied ten moons as 

 the Arabs did. Indeed, the Eomans counted ten moons per year, which 



^ The " Rational Almanac," price 5s., ex M. B. Cotsworth, York, England, 



