" (Goodrich's "Columbus,"
p. 22.)
They had clocks and dials for measuring time. They possessed gold and
silver money. They were the first agriculturists of the Old World,
raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc. They manufactured
linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years
B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and
sixty-five minor threads. They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze,
and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel. They were the
first chemists. The word "chemistry" comes from chemi, and chemi means
Egypt. They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made boats
out of earthenware; and, precisely as we are now making railroad
car-wheels of paper, they manufactured vessels of paper. Their dentists
filled teeth with gold; their farmers hatched poultry by artificial
beat. They were the first musicians; they possessed guitars, single and
double pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps, flutes, the sambric, ashur,
etc.; they had even castanets, such as are now used in Spain. In
medicine and surgery they had reached such a degree of perfection that
several hundred years B.
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