St. Augustine "An anomaly" w/ "Unrivaled Salubrity: NY Times

No, The New York Times has not published any new article devoted to travel to St. Augustine since September 5, 2003!. (A yellowed copy is on the bulletin board at The Bunnery, by the bathrooms).
Despite 450th commemoration hoopla and lavish spending by our City of St. Augustine, our maladroit St. Johns County Tourist Development Council and St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau, Inc. are still not focused on generating legitimate travel press -- they'd rather focus on paid advertising, a waste of our bed tax dollars.
But here's a gnarly article, a letter from an unnamed correspondent dated April 18, 1860, complete with misspelled words, from the April 28, 1860 edition of The New York Times:

FLORIDA.; Strange Aspect of St. Augustine--Climate and Productions--Its Unequaled Salubrity-- Florida Winters--Summer in St. Augustine --Hotels Crowded--St. Augustine the Resort of Invalids--The Town Three Hundred Years Old--Inducements for Emigration to Florida.
Published: April 28, 1860
Correspondence of the New-York Times.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Wednesday, April 18, 1860.

Among our American cities, this singular old town is an anomaly. It is not only finished, but going to decay. Built after.the manner of the South of Europe, with narrow streets, heavy stone houses, having balconies overhanging the sidewalks, and gardens shut in by high walls, the traveler will find nothing like it in the United States. In respect to the climate and productions, too, St. Augustine is less like an American than a tropical town. All Winter long (if the term Winter be not out of place here,) the gardens are filled with roses in bloom, and trees covered at once with fruit, foliage and flowers. Such, is particularly the case in respect to that most splendid of trees, the orange, which, though laboring under the effects of an unprecedented frost -- that occurred twenty-five years ago -- as well as the more recent and still continued blight of a destructive insect, is yet a magnificent ornament of all this region. Nor is it the only tropical tree which flourishes here. The fig, the pomegranate, the guava, and the banana, grow remarkably well, and require only a little labor and enterprise to make them richly profitable.

But the great boast of St. Augustine is its unrivaled salubrity. Lying just south of the 30th parallel of latitude, it is blest (sic) with a climate more benign than can be found elsewhere upon this continent; milder than that of Italy, and more equable than the far-famed temperature of Cuba.

In the months of January and February, this year, there was no frost, the range being from 44° to 82° Fahrenheit. In March (the coldest for a dozen years) there were a few very light frosts, doing no perceptible harm to garden vegetation. In short, there is scarcely an unpleasant day all Winter; fires are rarely kindled, windows usually open, and the weather is in the highest degree enjoyable. The natives claim that Summer is even more delightful, the fervor of the sun's rays being tempered by a sea breeze which comes up every day at 10 A.M., flowing over the heated land like a wave of cool water, and continuing through the afternoon and night. Its effect is so grateful upon sleepers that blankets are invariably required for comfort, and during the day its refreshing powers are indescribable.

Several hundred invalids and pleasure-seekers from the North spend the Winter here. The town is continually full, from November to June. At this moment every hotel and boarding-house is crowded, and we learn that hundreds on the St. John's River are deterred from coming by the lack of accomodations. More hotels are urgently needed.

St. Augustine arrogates (sic) to itself the title of "The Ancient City," and not without reason, for it was a place long before Plymouth Rock or Jamestown was thought of. Its age lacks but five years of three centuries. On the 8th of September, 1565, in the reign of PHILIP H. (sic) of Spain, PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES landed here and commenced the permanent settlement of the town. With the exception of a period of twenty years, from 1763 to 1783, St. Augustine remained under the dominion of the Spanish crown till 1821, when Florida was purchased by our Government for five millions of dollars, and. on the 10th of July of that year the Spanish flag, which had floated for two bundled and fifty-six years, (except the period of twenty years above mentioned of British possession,) was finally towered at the castle of St. Mark, and the Stars and Stripes took its place.

Of late the attention of Northern agriculturists and horticulturists has been turned to Florida, and with lesson, for this State offers peculiar advantages to enterprising emigrants with limited means. I shill enlarge on this topic in future letters, and for the present shall only say, generally, that among these advantages are a healthy climate, no Winders (sic) in the Northern sense of the term, and the consequent capacity of the land to produce two or three crops annually. To these may be added the fact that an excellent market exists here for all productions, which productions can also be readily shipped to New-York and other Northern cities. A.M.