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 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.