Braidentown, he will most assuredly put money in his purse, and at the same time satisfy a great public want. A hotel containing one hundred rooms, properly conducted, would be filled with guests six months of the year. We have fish, oysters, clams and game in abundance, on which boarders could fare sumptuously every day. Shall we have a hotel?

One and a half miles east of Braidentown, on the low, sandy beach of the bay, is the irregularly constructed village of Manatee. A stranger visiting Manatee will invariably ask himself why a town was ever built here? The following will solve the problem. Adjacent to the village, in a southerly direction, are rich hammock lands, which, in consequence of their malarial surroundings, could not be domiciled by their owners. The pine land on the bay shore offering a more healthful location for building, the early settlers availed themselves of it and erected their log and palmetto cabins first, and afterward more pretentious and architectural structures. The Indian war breaking out soon after the first settlers had located at Manatee, their cabins formed the nucleus of a settlement as a protection against the savages. Thus Manatee became a village, and for many years was the only settlement on the Manatee Bay. The hospitality of her citizens is proverbial. The stranger within their gates who asks for bread is never requested to masticate a stone. Unfortunately, the citizens of Manatee are not as progressive as hospitable. A plank wharf or foot-way, connecting the steamboat warehouse with the shore, is badly needed, and should be constructed at once. There is a great deal of vitality lying dormant in the old town, which, if thoroughly aroused and properly applied, would place an entirely different aspect on the face of affairs. The village contains a Methodist church, five stores, three boarding-houses, a drug store, an academy, a meat-shop and a post-office. Dr. George Casper, an enterprising Manateean, wishing to extend his usefulness, and being impressed with the belief that it would be a good thing to mix literature with physic, has issued the prospectus of a weekly newspaper, to be called the Manatee County News. It will be the pioneer paper of the county, and its editor will have plenty of elbow-room—Manatee County being as large as the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

One mile east of Manatee, on a point of land formed by the junction of Braiden Creek with the bay, stands a historic structure, known as Braiden Castle. It is composed of a concrete of lime and oyster-shells, two stories high, surmounted by a cupola or observatory, constructed of wood, from which a charming view of the surrounding country can be had. South-east, Braiden Creek, winding like a silver thread among innumerable evergreen islands, presents a view worthy of a poet’s dream. Westward, as far as the eye can scan, can be traced the blue waters of the bay glinting in the sun or dancing in the moonbeams on their way to the gulf. Northward, across the bay, the eye meets hammock, pine land and prairie stretching far away toward Tampa Bay. This old relic, scarred by Indian bullets, stands a sad memento of better days. Who shall write its history?

At Fair Oaks, about one and a half miles south of the castle, on a portion of the old Braiden plantation, is the largest and most thrifty young orange grove on the gulf coast of South Florida. It comprises nearly four thousand trees; belongs to the Hon. Charles H. Foster, ex-State Treasurer, and is a living, growing, bearing monument to Yankee pluck, enterprise and industry. Mr. Foster is now erecting at Fair Oaks the handsomest private residence in South Florida. The most direct route to Fair Oaks is by the way of Manatee, and the scenery en route is unsurpassed in the land of the myrtle and ivy. Leaving Rocky Ford, you pass Glen Falls, whose pellucid waters sparkle and dance over rock and through chasm, on their course to the Manatee. Graceful palms, with their evergreen foliage; stately live oaks, draped with pendant moss, swaying to and fro in the breeze; girdled oaks, gayly festooned from base to apex with ivy, yellow jessamine and Virginia creeper, gladden the eye on either side of the road, and orange-blossoms perfume the air with their delightful fragrance, rendering the scene enchanting as fairy land.

In the village of Manatee and adjacent hammock may be seen the orange groves of Mrs. Gates, Revs. Edmund Lee, A. A. Robinson and E. Glazier, Messrs. Pelote, Curry, Harllee, Mitchell, Vanderipe, Lloyd, Clark, Warner, McNeill, Casper, Gates, Wyatt, Adams, Broberg, Reed and Wilson. Mrs. Gates, Parson Lee and Major Adams also have banana groves in bearing. The latter gentleman is engaged in erecting a large concrete mansion, with carriage-house and servants’ quarters of the same material. Situated in an eligible position on the bank of the bay, surrounded by tropical fruits, flowers and vines, whose evergreen foliage constantly waving in the breeze, renders the location highly picturesque.

Some four or five miles south of Manatee, en route to Sarasota Bay, are thrifty young orange groves, belonging to the Messrs. Helm, father and sons, Dryman, Marshall, Younglove, Dunham, Saunders, Azlin, Howell, Thompson, Williams and Whitted; and on Black-Jack Ridge, near Braidentown, may be seen the thrifty grove of Judge E. M. Graham. The groves of the Messrs. Helm are pronounced by every one who have seen them to be the most promising of their age in the State. They are only four years old, but will put to the blush many groves twice their age. They are monuments of clean and persistent culture.

On the west side of Ware’s Creek, skirting the bay, is Willemsenburg, consisting of three houses and the frame of a mammoth hotel. This grim skeleton, gray with age, has a history. Erected originally by Dr. Hunter, at one time a noted physician of New York, and Charles W. Skinner, a Boston capitalist, on Sanibel, or “Sanitarium” Island, near Punta Rassa, it was soon blown or washed down. A portion of the wreck, with additional lumber from Cedar Key, was soon afterward erected at Sarasota Bay, where another partner, Dr. Dunham, of St. Louis, joined in the enterprise. A misunderstanding between the trio resulted in the withdrawal of the two medical men before the structure was completed. Mr. Skinner subsequently razed the building to the ground, rafted it through Palmasola Bay into the Manatee, and erected it on its present site, where it has stood in an unfinished condition during the past five years. The decease of Mr. Skinner soon after its erection, caused its progress to stop as suddenly as did “my grandfather’s clock” at the death of its owner.

Westward, separated by an imaginary line, is Fogartyville, a community composed principally of boat-builders and seafaring men, with their families. It contains a store, boat-builder’s shed, half a dozen dwelling-houses, a floating dry-dock with two sections in working order, and two additional sections nearly completed. The Messrs. Fogarty and Captain Bhart are the owners of the dry-dock.

In this cozy little settlement, close down by the waters of the bay, lives Madam Julia Atzeroth, and in the garden attached to her house was cultivated with her own hands the first coffee grown in the United States. Madam Atzeroth, or Madam “Joe,” as she is called by her friends, is a character, and deserves an extended notice.

CHAPTER IV.