Jean Taché was also an extensive holder of real estate in and round Quebec, warehouses (_des voûtes_) on the Napoleon wharf; a country seat on the Ste. Foye road, subsequently the property of Surveyor- General Samuel Holland--Holland Farm; lastly, the well-known business stand, where, in 1847, Mr. St. Michel printed James Bell Forsyth's news sheet, the _Morning Chronicle_. Commercial ruin overtook the worthy Lower Town magnate, Monsieur Taché; his ships and cargoes, during the war of the conquest, like the rest of poor, deserted Canada, fell into English hands, being captured at sea; out of the disaster Jean Taché saved naught but his honourable name. 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.