it in charge. The men we
saw told us that by hard work they could make four journeys in the day,
earning a franc by each; out of which, as they said, they must support
stomach and boots, one journey making them ready for a meal, and eight
journeys finishing a pair of soles.

It cost us an hour and a half to reach the maire's first chalet, where
we were to lunch on such food as the old woman who managed it might have
on hand; that is to say, possibly bread, and, beyond that, milk only, in
some shape or other. The forms under which milk can be taught to appear
are manifold. A young Swiss student, who in the madness of his passion
for beetle-hunting had spent fifteen days in a small chalet at
Anzeindaz, sleeping each night on the hay,[67] gave me, some time
since, a list of the various foods on which he lived and grew fat. The
following is the _carte_, as he arranged it:--

Viandes. Vins.

Du seret. Du lait de vache.[68]

Du caille. Du lait froid.

Du beurre. Du lait de chevre.

Du fromage gras. Petit lait.

Du fromage mi-gras. De la creme.

Du fromage maigre. Du lait de beurre.[69]

Tome de vache. Petit lait de chevre.

Tome de chevre.

_Pour les Cochons_.

Du lait gate.

Cuite.

Some of the solids and fluids in the earlier part of this _carte_ we
felt tolerably sure of finding at the maire's chalet, and accordingly
any amount of cream and _seret_ proved to be forthcoming. The maire
asserted that _cerac_ was the true name of this recommendable article
of food, _cere_ being the patois for the original word. Others had
told us that the real word was _serre_, meaning _compressed_ curds;
but the French writers who treat learnedly of cheese-making in the
_Annales de Chimie_ adopt the form _serets_; and in the _Annales
Scientifiques de l'Auvergne_ I find both _seret_ and _serai_, from the
Latin _serum_. There was also bread, which arrived when we were
sitting down to our meal: it had been baked in a huge ring, for
convenience of carriage, and was brought up from the low-lands on a
stick across a boy's shoulder. When the old woman thought it safe to
expose a greater dainty to our attacks, at a later period of the meal,
she brought out a pot of _caille_, a delightful luxury which prevails
in the form of nuggets of various size floating in sour whey. Owing to
a general