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.