122 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



anyone assail the solid foundations of this story, I 

 might triumphantly retort that on Stockdale's careful 

 map of 1824 there is to be found Jamaica Inn, but 

 no Bolventor, and that on the new Ordnance map of 

 1889 will be found Bolventor, but no Jamaica Inn. 



Indian Queen, at the extreme south-east corner of 

 the parish of St. Columb, is not only an inn, but a 

 village. Let a Cornish colleague of the past tell the 

 tale. He says : 



' I lived for twenty-three years within three miles of the place, 

 and have spent many hours in the old bar-parlour [enforcing, no 

 doubt, the principles of sobriety and thrift] . I have been told by 

 my father that Indian Queen was a very important centre in the 

 old coaching days ; as it was a sort of junction, where all the 

 mails for St. Columb, Padstow, etc., were brought, and I think 

 also for Wadebridge. When I first knew the place it consisted of 

 the old inn and about a dozen houses, but now it has grown 

 to quite a large village, with two chapels, a chapel-of-ease, a 

 Literary Institution and News-room, etc., but still retains the 

 old name of Indian Queen.' 



In Truro the mail-coaches ran to the Eoyal Hotel, 

 at the bottom of Lemon Street. At Falmouth they 

 halted at The Green Bank Hotel, which stands at the 

 head of the harbour, and still (as in the old days, 

 when Commissioner Bowen surveyed the port and 

 laid down buoys for sixteen sail of battle ships) opens 

 its hospitable doors to the traveller — that comfortable 

 inn where guests stay as long as they can, and where 

 servants remain for a generation. 



As a fact unique at mail-coach inns, I will mention 

 that the same official who filled the useful post of 



