Can I move Mail (Lion) files back to Mail (Snow Leopard)?

Hi,
I've encountered a screwy problem and am wondering if there is an easy fix.  I have an iMac at the office that is now running Lion, and a MacBook Pro at home running Snow Leopard (which I am keeping there for now because of the Quicken issue with Lion).  Anyway, my laptop hard drive totally failed (still trying to recover the data but have been unsuccessful so far...worst drive failure I've ever encountered...even TechTool Pro tech support couldn't help) and I lost literally 10s of thousands of emails over the last many years.  I have the vast majority of those emails on my iMac, but the file structure is all changed now so it is not straightforward to just copy-paste folders from the iMac (Lion) to the MacBook (Snow Leopard). 
I can think of two tedious ways to move the files:
1) Actually burrow into the ridiculous level of folders in the Lion Mail structure and copy directly...but I'm not willing to spend that time for 10s of thousands of emails.
2) All prior years emails are in folders "On My Mac" on the iMac, so I can re-upload the emails via IMAP and then download them to MacBook...but this is tiresome.
That said, is there a way to easily backward import the Lion Mail files to Snow Leopard Mail?
Thanks,
- DC

Hi everyone,
I was able to import my Apple Mail after downgrading from Lion to Snow Leopard.
Here is what I did:
- In Mail, click Mailbox > New Mailbox.
- in the New Mailbox dialog box, select "On My Mac" as the location and give it any "MailboxName" you want. Click OK.
- Now in Finder, open Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox. In the MailboxName.mbox folder (where MailboxName is whatever name you gave the mailbox), all you'll see is an info.plist file. Add a folder called "Messages".
- Go to the location where you've backed up all of your email from Lion and drill down to the Messages folder where you have all your .emlx files. Copy all of these .emlx files and paste them into the new Messages folder you've created (i.e., at the Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox > Messages location).
- Go back to Mail. If you open the new "MailboxName" folder under "ON MY MAC", you'll see that it is still empty. Snow Leopard Mail can't read the .emlx files from Lion Mail. But we're not done yet. There are some more steps.
- On the Mail File menu, click Import Mailboxes.
- Select Apple Mail and click Continue.
- Browse to Library > Mail > Mailboxes, select "MailboxName.mbox", click Choose, and then click Done.
- Snow Leopard Mail will now import Lion Mail. It creates an "Import" folder in Mail under "ON MY MAC". Expand the Import folder and you'll see a a folder with the "MailboxName" you selected. When you open this you'll see all of your mail items that came from Lion Mail.
- You can repeat the above for each mailbox you want to import.

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