LY SETTLER FOR CULTIVATING
HIS NEWLY CLEARED LAND.]

[Illustration: FISHING PROVIDED FOOD AS WELL AS RECREATION FOR THE
COLONISTS. (Conjectural sketch by Sidney E. King.)]

[Illustration: A FEW OF THE MANY ARTIFACTS RELATING TO FISHING UNEARTHED
AT JAMESTOWN: FISHHOOKS, FISH-GIGS, AND LEAD NET WEIGHTS.]

Handtools used by the Jamestown farmers during the 17th-century have
been found in abundance. These include axes, picks, billhooks,
pitchforks, spades, rakes, mattocks, sickles, scythes, broad hoes,
narrow hoes, and shovels.

Only a few parts belonging to heavy farming implements have been
unearthed, including a few ploughshares and small metal fragments from
wagons, carts, and harrows.

Fishing

When the first settlers planted their small colony at Jamestown, the
tidewater rivers and bays and the Atlantic Ocean bordering the Virginia
coast teemed with many kinds of fish and shellfish which were both
edible and palatable. Varieties which the colonists soon learned to eat
included sheepshead, shad, sturgeon, herring, sole, white salmon, bass,
flounder, pike, bream, perch, rock, and drum, as well as oysters,
crabs, and mussels. Seafood was an important source of food for the
colonists, and at times, especially during the early years of the
settlement, it was the main source.

Those in England who planned to go to Virginia were always advised to
provide themselves (among other items) with nets, fishhooks, and lines.

During archeological explorations, fishhooks, lead net weights,
fish-gigs, and small anchors were uncovered. These are reminders of a
day when fish and shellfish were abundant in every tidewater Virginia
creek, river, and bay.

Health

Keeping well and healthy, even managing to stay alive in the unfamiliar
Virginia wilderness during the first two decades of the Jamestown
settlement, was no easy matter. In the group of 105 original settlers,
67 died during the first 8 months. During the hard winter of 1609-10
(known as the "starving time"), the population dwindled from 500 to
about 60 as a result of sickness, Indian attacks, and famine.

One of the members of the first colony was a surgeon, William Wilkinson
by name. As the colony grew, other surgeons, physicians, and
apothecaries, emigrated to Virginia. Their lot was not easy, for it
appears that they were seldom idle in an island community having more
than its share of "cruell diseases, Swellings, Flixes, Burning Fevers,
warres and meere fa