We fail to trace for a time the fortunes of his Mountain Hill Counting House. At the dawn of this century the premises were used as a famous coffee-house, the "Neptune" Inn, [91] a noted place of resort for merchants, masters and owners of ships. Like the Golden Fleece Tavern of Corinth, which seems to have sheltered the father of History— Herodotus—in the year 460 B.C., its "banqueting saloon" was roomy, though every word uttered there also smacked of the salt water. The old "Neptune" was probably occasionally looked up in 1807 by the Press Gang, which, in those days, was not a thing to be laughed at. Witness the fate of poor Latresse, shot down for refusing to surrender to Lieut. Andrel, R.N., on trying to make his escape from a tavern in St. John's suburbs, where he had been attending a dancing party. [92]
Singularly enough, sixty years ago, the leading Lower Town merchants met in this old tenement of the former "Syndic des Marchands" to establish the first Exchange. Of the resolutions passed at the meeting thereat, held in 1816, and presided over by an eminent merchant, John William Woolsey, Esq., subsequently President of the Quebec Bank, we find a notice in the Quebec Gazette, of 12th December, 1816. [93] They decided to establish a Merchant's Exchange in the lower part of the "Neptune" Inn. Amongst those present, one recognizes familiar names—John Jones, George Symes, James Heath, Robert Melvin, Thomas Edward Brown, &c.
Why was the place called "Neptune" Inn? For the obvious reason that a large statue of the god of the sea, bearing in one hand a formidable iron trident, stood over the main entrance in a threatening attitude. This conspicuous land-mark was known to every British ship-captain frequenting our port. Right well can the writer of these lines remember the truculent trident.
But if, even in the days of that excellent landlady, Mrs. Hammond, it meant to the wearied mariner boundless cheer, the latest London papers, pipes and soothing rum punch mixed by a comely and cheerful bar-maid, to the unsophisticated Canadian peasant, attracted to the Lower Town on market days, it was of evil portent.
With honest Jean Baptiste, more deeply read in the Petit Catéchisme than in heathen mythology, the dreaded god of the sea and his truculent trident were ominous, in his simple eyes, they symbolised the Prince of Darkness, "Le diable et sa fourche," the terrors of a hereafter.
This did not, however, prevent Neptune from standing sentry, in the same exalted spot, for close on forty years, until in fact, having fallen to pieces by natural decay, it was removed about the time the Old Neptune Inn became the Morning Chronicle office; the whereabouts of its dejecta membra are now a dead secret.
The origin of the famed statue had defied the most recondite searchers of the past. For the following we are indebted to the retentive memory of that eminently respected authority, the "oldest inhabitant." The statue of Neptune, says the octogenarian, Robert Urquhart, so well remembered at the foot of Mountain Hill, was presented to the landlord of the hotel, George Cossar, formerly butler to Hon. Matthew Bell, who then owned the St. Lawrence Chambers. It had been the figure-head of the Neptune, a large king's ship, stranded in 1817 on Anticosti. Would the stranded Neptune of 1817 be the same as the flagship of Admiral Durell in 1759, the Neptune of 90 guns, to whom the large bell bearing the word "Neptune, 1760," inscribed on, belonged? This bell, which formerly stood on the Royal Engineers' workshop at Quebec, was recently taken to Ottawa. The wreck had been bought by John Goudie, of St. Roch suburb, then a leading ship builder, and, having to break it up, the figure-head was brought to Quebec, and presented as above stated.
The following respecting press gangs and the presence of Lord Nelson, whilst at Quebec in 1782, was contributed by one of the "oldest inhabitants" to QUEBEC PAST AND PRESENT, but reached too late for insertion:—
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST.
J. M. LEMOINE, Esq., Spencer Grange.