St. Peter street has become the general headquarters of the most important commerce, and of life insurance and fire assurance offices. The financial institutions are there proudly enthroned: the Bank of Montreal (founded in 1818 and incorporated in 1828), Bank of Quebec (founded in 1817), the Union Bank (founded in 1865), the Banque Nationale (founded in 1873), the Bank of British North America (founded in 1836, incorporated in 1840, opened at Quebec in 1837), the Merchants' Bank (founded in 1861). In this street resided, in 1774, the Captain Bouchette, who, in the following year, in his little craft, _Le Gaspé_, brought us back our brave Governor, Guy Carleton; M. Bouchard, merchant, M. Panet, N.P. (the father of His Lordship, Bishop B.C. Panet), as also M. Boucher, Harbor Master of Quebec, "(who was appointed to that post by the Governor, Sir R. S. Milnes, on the recommendation of the Duke of Kent.)." [89] Boucher had piloted the vessel, having on board the 7th Regiment, (the Duke's), from Quebec to Halifax. The office in which the _Quebec Morning Chronicle_ has been published since 1847, belonged in 1759 to M. Jean Taché, "President of the Mercantile Body," "an honest, and sensible man," as appears by _Mémoirs sur le Canada_, (1749-60). One of our first poets, he composed a poem "_On the Sea_." The ancestor of the late Sir E. P. Taché, and of the novelist, Jos. Marmette and others, he possessed, at that period, extensive buildings on the Napoleon wharf, which were destroyed by fire in 1845, and a house in the country, on the Ste. Foye road, afterwards called "Holland House," after Major Samuel Holland, our first Provincial Surveyor-General, whose services as surveyor and engineer were subsequently so conspicuous at Quebec and at Prince Edward Island. The _Chronicle_ building, during nearly half a century, was a coffee house, much frequented by sea-faring men, known as the "Old Neptune" Inn. The effigy of the sea-god, armed with his formidable trident, placed over the main entrance, seemed to threaten the passers-by. We can remember, as yesterday, his colossal proportions. "Old Neptune" [90] has disappeared about thirty years back. _THE OLD NEPTUNE INN._ "Shall I not take mine ease in mine Inn." --_Shakespeare_. "The Golden Fleece was the oldest tavern in Corinth. It had been the resort of sea-faring men from the remotest period."--(_Travels of Herodotus in Greece_, 460 _B.C._)