also is in Florida. You see it in our productive soil, in our vast orange groves, in our bananas, pineapples, guavas, and pomegranates, which no other State of the Union can produce. Who then shall say that both the “Fountain of Youth” and “El Dorado” are not within the boundaries of Florida? Our climate is a perpetual summer; the husbandman tickles the soil with the plow and hoe, and it laughs with an abundant harvest; the stately magnolias and graceful palms lock hands in our hammocks and wave their evergreen foliage as a token of welcome to immigrants, and wild flowers gladden the eye and perfume the air with their fragrance.

CHAPTER III.

THE Manatee River, or, more properly speaking, bay, is one of the most picturesque sheets of water in Florida. It is fourteen miles in length, with an average width of one and a half miles. One of its tributaries—the Manatee River proper—extends still further eastward, some twenty miles; and another northward, half that distance. Its course is nearly due west to Egmont Key, where it mingles its waters with those of Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It lies between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth parallels of north latitude, and in longitude 5½° west from Washington. A person passing up the bay on the mail steamer for the first time, will be charmed with the tropical and semi-tropical scenery that meets his view on either side of the bay, from its mouth to Braidentown, the present terminus of steamboat navigation. Egmont Key, with its forest of cabbage palmettos nodding their evergreen plumes in the morning sun; the stately date-palms and olive trees on Snead’s Island, on the north side of the bay, and the pretty villas surrounded by young orange and banana groves on the south side, between Palmasola city and Manatee, form a landscape of rare tropical beauty, unexceled in the land of flowers, and unrivaled by the fairest scenes in Italia’s famed land.

Until quite recently, this part of Florida, the great sanitarium of the world, has, comparatively speaking, been a sealed book to the invalids and pleasure-seekers of the North and West, who spend their winters in Jacksonville, St. Augustine and the towns on the St. Johns, Halifax and Indian Rivers, and console themselves with the idea that they have seen all parts of Florida worth visiting. The principal drawback which the Gulf coast has had to contend with, and which partially exists at this time, is lack of speedy transportation and comfortable hotel accommodations. These are being remedied, and, when the Manatee region shall have become as thickly populated as the St. Johns, our facilities for transportation, etc., will equal those of the Atlantic coast.

The railroad now being built by Eastern capitalists, between Palatka on the St. Johns and Tampa at the head of the bay of that name on the Gulf coast, will be completed within two years. Then the iron horse, with bowels of fire, muscles of steel and breath of steam, with a shriek and a snort, will rush over the metallic track and annihilate time and space so rapidly, that the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will be within a few hours of each other. A narrow-gauge railroad from Tampa to the Manatee, and thence to Sarasota Bay, will soon follow, giving us direct and rapid communication with the principal cities of the North and West. The round-about route over King David’s Transit Railroad to Cedar Key, and thence by steamboat to the Manatee, will then be abandoned, and henceforth remembered only as a necessity of by-gone days. The recent completion of the Louisville, Nashville and Great Southern Railroad, with a terminus at Pensacola, will soon give us direct and speedy communication with the cities of Louisville, Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago and St. Louis, and open up the best and most available markets for the fruits and vegetables of the Gulf coast. General Alexander, Vice-President of this company, recently expressed his willingness to assist in the establishment of a line of steamers between Pensacola and Manatee, touching at other points along the coast.

Our climate is far superior to that of any other part of Florida; and, I do not think I hazard much in saying, to that of any part of the habitable globe. Having, during a somewhat eventful life of sixty-two years, visited Europe, Asia, Africa, South and Central America, Mexico and California, I say, and “I say it boldly,” that in my varied travels, nowhere have I found so healthful and desirable a climate as “Sunland,” on the Manatee Bay. We are exempt from ice and the chilling blasts that sweep along the St. Johns and Halifax, and also from tornadoes and hurricanes, so destructive on the Atlantic coast.

Insects are neither numerous nor troublesome. I have been worse annoyed by mosquitoes in the City of Philadelphia than in this part of Florida. The ubiquitous flea is, I admit, rather prevalent here, but one soon becomes reconciled to his habits, and honors his drafts whenever he presents his bill. Snakes are not as numerous here as in Pennsylvania. There are, however, rattlesnakes and moccasins in Florida. The former I have never seen, and the latter but seldom. Those that came under my observation, appeared to be worse frightened than I was, and made a hasty exit. Alligators are not numerous in this section, and are comparatively harmless. Like a once noted statesman, they desire to be let alone. If closely cornered, they will fight; but they prefer to run, if a chance is offered for escape.

Braidentown, the embryo town of the Manatee, is situated on the south side of the bay, about eight miles above its entrance into Tampa Bay. Located on a bluff some fifteen feet above tidewater, it commands a fine view of the surrounding country and of the entire bay. Being constantly fanned by the breezes from the gulf “with healing on their wings,” it is in point of healthfulness all that the most fastidious pleasure-seeker or invalid could wish for. From Jack’s Creek, its eastern boundary, to its western terminus, Ware’s Creek, it contains a frontage on the bay of three-fourths of a mile, dotted with picturesque villas, surrounded by tropical fruits and flowers. Although yet in a chrysalis state, being scarcely two years old, it contains two boarding-houses, two stores, a meat-shop, post-office and a warehouse, with a wharf connecting it with the shore—the only one on the bay east of Palmasola city. Passengers for Manatee and other places on the bay are conveyed on shore in sail or row-boats. Major W. I. Turner, the projector of Braidentown, a Virginian by birth, has been a resident of Florida for forty-five years. Although on the shady side of life, he is still hale and hearty. May he live to see his bantling, now in her leading-strings, the county-seat of Manatee County. Stranger events have happened. This is an age of progress; the world moves, and Florida, after her Rip Van Winkle sleep of three hundred years, is moving with it.

Sportsmen visiting this place can be accommodated with sail-boats for fishing, or mule and ox teams for a hunting trip to the Miakka, the sportsman’s paradise. Captain Charles Miller and Billy Stowell, alias “Buffalo Bill,” both “old salts” and reliable men, can be engaged with their respective crafts, the Sancho Panza and Onkeehi, at reasonable rates. Ox and mule teams can be had of John N. Harris and Dr. S. J. Tyler.

The reader will pardon a slight digression, and allow me to state, that if any person who knows how to run a hotel, will start one in