Get started using mercurial without cloning

[Harry Putnam]

After reading through (part) of the book (Mercurial The Definitive
Guide), I didn't see, during the discussion of getting started,
anything but cloning offered as a way to get started.

I might have missed it of course, but is there not something available
like cvs import command?  For people wanting to get started but have
nothing to clone?

Specifically, I want to use my  cvs repo, and just put that bodily
into a mercurial repo (without any of the cvs related files or meta
data)

My projects are so small on only on a single user home lan that just
ditching any cvs related info would not be a problem, no need to bring
over revision histories or whatever.

So not really talking about converting the cvs repo so much as just
wanting to get all the files and directory structure that now make up
my cvs repo turned into a mercurial repo.  I'll probably want to
rearrange the actual file hierarchy somewhat.

My current cvs repo is a series of hosts as top level directories,
with a directory hierarchy at least partially mirroring the separate
hosts.

Not all hierarchies are the same from one host to another but there is
a lot of similarity throughout.

Something along this line:

  host1/common/<files and directories>
  host1/etc/<files and directories>
  host1/etc/mail/<files and directories>
  host1/usr/local/<files and directories>
  host1/home/reader/scripts/<files and directories>
  -------        ---------       ---=---       ---------      -------- 
  host2/common/<files and directories>
  host2/etc/<files and directories>
  host2/etc/mail/<files and directories>
  host2/usr/local/<files and directories>
  host1/home/reader/scripts/<files and directories>
  host2/projects/<file and directores>
  
  [...]
  
So that is roughly how the cvs repo is structured.  I'd like to just
copy all of a checked out module of the host1 structure (minus the CVS
related stuff) and create a mercurial repo from it.

Then if I'm following along with the book, clone from that first repo
to the other hosts, and make whatever changes to the separate hosts as
time goes on.

But I didn't see much about how to start up in this way?