"America, however, is like a huge ship steaming in a tiny river," the official added.
From 1900, both grew from tiny river outposts into cities, but only black men with colonial work permits were allowed to live in them legally.
'Walking through the Lincolnshire wolds is like being in Gulliver's Travels," says Helen from the Lincolnshire Wolds Countryside Service as we stride along the tiny river Bain.
But then a dip in the two-lane road reveals something quite different: a tiny river town that bustles on weekends with tourists roaming antique shops, dining at restaurants and playing, weather permitting, in the Delaware River.
The musty smell of the Hudson and the white noise of the West Side Highway meld nicely with a tall yellow sprinkler and a snaking tiny river that curves through the sea-green and bright-blue flooring, spongy soft for tiny bare feet.
Proceed to main courses such as tiny river shrimps cooked with tea leaves, braised pork shoulder, lion's head meatballs (so called because the pork meatballs are cooked with Chinese cabbage leaves, which are said to resemble a lion's mane) and stir-fried rice cakes.
Next came calamares rellenos de mariscos, squid stuffed with a heavenly mixture of crab and tiny river shrimp.
Dining is mostly street food and local specialties like ram bap (corn spring rolls), ron (tiny river clam soup) and ca bong song tra (Song Tra River mudskipper fish).
Then we went through all the paper napkins on our table eating crab claws slathered in tear-jerking mayonesa de chipotle and finished the meal with sopa de mariscos, Nico's crowning glory, a soup of medium and small shrimp (Veracruz shrimp, especially the tiny river shrimp, are incredibly juicy and sweet), octopus, conch, red snapper and crab served with lots of hot, hand-patted tortillas.
Do you have a tiny river that runs behind your tiny house?
