“Trip the light fastastic toe”
as gracefully as a miss of sixteen. May her days in the land be prolonged beyond fourscore years and ten.
CHAPTER V.
The Warners, Mother and Sons—Palmasola City—Steam Saw-mill and other Improvements—Sam Nichols and his Shell-mound—Palmasola Bay—Sarasota Bay and its Surroundings—Snead’s Island—Shell-mound—Date-palm and Olive Trees—Uncle Joe and his Dogs with Glass Eyes—Sapp’s Point—Palmetto—The Patten and Turner Plantations—Judah P. Benjamin—Oak Hill—Terraceia Island—Landing of De Soto in 1539.
WESTWARD of Fogartyville, on the south side of the bay, among the most prominent residences, are those of the Warners, mother and sons. Thence westward, across a bayou, on a sand-spit projecting into the bay, stands the steam saw and planing-mill of Messrs. W. S. Warner & Co., just completed. This mill, wharf and warehouse are the nuclei of Palmasola City, which is soon to skirt the adjacent sand hills, and cause the surrounding “wilderness to blossom as the rose.” Mr. Warner is a Bay State Yankee of indomitable pluck, and his partner, Mr. J. S. Beach, who resides at Terre Haute, Ind., controls the money bags of a national bank. If capital and pluck wean build a city, the success of Palmasola may be set down as assured. Along the bay, west of the Warners, are the ranches of Messrs. Sweetzer, Burgess, Sykes and Bishop. A few miles further west is Shaw’s Point, at the mouth of the bay. Here, on an immense shell-mound, surrounded by hammock and pine land, Mr. Sam Nichols, a native of Alabama, has entered a homestead of 160 acres of land. Although severely wounded during our late “unpleasantness,” Mr. Nichols has beaten his musket into a plowshare, his sword into a pruning-hook, and, like a good citizen, is earning his bread by the sweat of his brow.
Along the Gulf coast, southward, skirting Palmasola and Sarasota Bays, may be found the hospitable homes of Messrs. Farrar, Adams, Moore, Buckner, Harp, Stephonse, Tyler, Spang, Crowley, Dorch, Callan, Riggin, Dunham, Smith, Helveston, Whitaker, Willard, Bidwell, Edmondson, C. E. and M. R. Abbe, Liddell, Greer, Yonge, Boardman, Young, Lancaster, Cunliff, Woodworth, Jones, Anderson, Crocker, Hansen, Bronson Bros., Clower, Lowe, Webb, Griffith, Bacon, Knight, Guptrel and Roberts.
On the north side of Manatee Bay, at its entrance into Tampa Bay, is Snead’s Island, separated from the mainland by a narrow and shallow “cut-off” leading into Terraceia Bay, and also by a wider and deeper channel opening into Tampa Bay, and separating it from Terraceia Island. Midway of the island, fronting on Manatee Bay, is a curiosity in the shape of a shell-mound or earth-work, crescent-shaped, and some forty feet in height. The distance between the points of the crescent on the bank of the bay, is five hundred feet. On the highest point of the mound, and nearly in the centre, stands a frame dwelling, somewhat dilapidated, erected by a former owner of the place. On the eastern angle are two date-palm and two olive trees. The former are fifteen inches in diameter and forty feet in height. The latter are eighteen inches in diameter two feet above the ground, and fifty feet in height. Both the olive and date-palms bear fruit; the former in large quantities. On the mound in the centre of the crescent, and near the house, are two olibanum trees, eighteen inches in diameter and fifty feet in height. Was this mound an Indian burial place, or was it thrown up by the early Spanish invaders as a defense against the Natchez, a warlike and semi-civilized tribe of Indians, who, at the time of the Spanish conquest, inhabited this part of Florida? Quien sabe?
The only human occupants of the island at this time are uncle Joe Franklin and his wife, an aged couple. Uncle Joe lives in a palmetto hut with a shell floor, and with the old ’oman and two glasseyed dogs as companions,
“His hours in cheerful labor fly.”