Today we visited Henricus Historical Park in Virginia. Henricus was the second successful English settlement in the New World. Jamestown was the first settlement,but it had become a very unhealthy place to live. Horrific diseases as cholera and smallpox had killed most of the settlers in that colony. Three hundred people left Jamestown and started the city of Henricus. Here the first English hospital was started,and the first college was charted for the New World. This week-end was called "public days",meaning that there would be no admission charge and volunteers would be re-creating this first successful settlement of the New World. It really impressed me as to how labor-intensive life was for the settlers and Indians back in the early 1600s. One of the volunteers was chipping at a stone to make an axe head(a process known as flint knapping). He claimed that it takes him 100 hours to make one axe head. I also never realized what it a meant to skin an animal,and scrape the skin- until I saw it actually done. What a bloody mess-there was a squaw in the Indian village who was performing this task in a very matter of fact manner! It was a squirrel which she was skinning-I have a picture of that posted here. We ended our day at an Octoberfest at the Capital Ale House.There was a German band performing for the evening, as well as German folk dancers. Posted here is a couple of those dancers playing "Edelweiss" on cow bells.
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