^Location, Boundaries, an& Brea. n 



I, myself, although I have only visited Lower Egypt, and that as a 

 tourist in a very hasty manner and for a very few days, was greatly 

 struck by the great similarity that I found between the two countries 

 and between the habits of the native Egyptian and the Mexican In- 

 dians. The Egyptian plows are used by the Mexican Indians, and 

 they are drawn in Mexico as in Egypt by oxen whose yokes are fast- 

 ened to their horns, while in other countries they are fastened on their 

 necks. Several of the agricultural products of Egypt and Mexico are 

 exactly the same, and the way in which foods are prepared in both 

 countries is, too, very similar ; and I also found similar traits and 

 race characteristics between the Egyptian Copts and some tribes of 

 the Mexican Indians. 



The great difference between Egypt and Mexico is that Mexico 

 lacks " irrigation," which has made Egypt that small corner of the 

 earth the most remarkable and productive country in the world. 

 Owing to the great stretch of latitude from the Rio Grande to the 

 Guatemala boundary, everything that grows in Egypt, and in fact in 

 any other part of the world, can be produced in Mexico by the aid of 

 irrigation. 



the Egyptian shaduf is small, is composed of prepared timbers, and the counterpoise 

 to the well bucket is an immense chunk of dried, hardened Nile mud. The Mexican 

 shaduf utilizes a forked tree and swings across it a long tapering tree trunk or branch, 

 and the counterpoise consists of a large sink stone or mass of stones fastened together. 

 Although Mexico stretches farther south than Egypt, the two countries lie, generally 

 speaking, between the same parallels of latitude, but the altitude of Irapuato is 5000 

 feet above the sea-level of the Nile, so that the same degree of undress is not 

 expected or found in the Mexicans as in the Egyptian shaduf workers. I saw, how- 

 ever, in the neighborhood of Irapuato two Indians at well sweeps working side by side 

 who were dressed only in white cotton loin cloths, who looked like the twin brothers of 

 shaduf workers whom I have seen photographed on the Nile. . . . The water- 

 carrier of Cairo is much like his brother of Guanajuato, where a long earthen jar is 

 used. The groups about the fountains with jars of water bodily borne on the women's 

 heads or on a protecting turban-like ring, or balanced on the men's shoulders, are also 

 Oriental. Corn is ground between two stones in Asiatic fashion. 



'* Egyptian sand spouts are common. Also Egyptian types of domestic utensils 

 of pottery. The Mexican woman with a baby at her back securely fastened in the 

 reboso, which throws the infant's weight on the mother's shoulders, is to be compared 

 with the Egyptian woman whose reboso covers her face while the child straddles her 

 shoulders, holding to her head and leaving her hands unfettered as in the Mexican 

 fashion. There are no Egyptian camels, but even more numerous donkeys, the patient 

 burros. The Indian villages, either of adobe or bamboo, the thatched roofs and organ 

 cactus fences, and alive with goats, donkeys, or snarling curs, are African in effect. 

 There Aztecs picture writings resemble the Egyptian, the paper being made from the 

 maguey instead of the papyrus. The Aztecs employed captives on great public works 

 as in Egypt. Mexico thus has pyramids with much broader base than those of Egypt, 

 though not nearly so high, and idols quite as ugly. Gold ornaments, beads, and other 

 highly prized antiquities are found in the tombs as in Egypt." 



