MANATEE BAY--ITS TROPICAL SCENERY--EGMONT KEY--SNEAD'S
ISLAND--DATE, PALM AND OLIVE TREES--CLIMATE--INSECTS--BRAIDENTOWN
AND ITS SURROUNDINGS--MANATEE, THE OLDEST TOWN ON THE BAY--ITS
EARLY HISTORY--BRAIDEN CASTLE--FAIR OAKS--ORANGE
GROVES--WILLEMSENBURG AND FOGARTYVILLE.
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 5-1/2°
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.