| Jamestown Settlement is a recreated version of the original Jamestowne. Research has been conducted, both on site of the original landing site and in England, to ensure that the construction of the recreation is accurate. The church structure here is not the brick structure at Historic Jamestowne (See previous reports.), but is more of a "second-pig" version of the building. The building didn't mean very much to me until I thought about some context. This village is called Jamestown. The river it sits on is called James River. The fort is James Fort. All are named after a guy named James who was the king of England. That makes sense. But to stand in a church building in a place that honors King James is interesting because this was the man who made the Bible available to the masses. We still know that Bible as the King James version. At the entrance to the area, there was a small patch of tobacco plants (above). This was my introduction to actual tobacco in the raw. Our guide invited us to touch the leaves, but warned us that they would feel sticky. That, it turns out, was an understatement. No one has every explained to me that tobacco plants are sticky (The stalks were even more so.), and later in the week, I heard that it is the tar in tobacco that makes them so. Anyone working in a tobacco field would have become sticky all over from handling these unusual plants. Anything in the air would have stuck to that person, making him dirty and grimy. I wish I had more time to explore in this area, but there were original objects and displays to see in the air conditioned museum, and I am not sorry that I didn't miss those. Unfortunately, that means I didn't do a thorough job of photographing what these structures offer to visitors. | |
