leased Mr. van Buren when I
told him, and he says I have made splendid progress. I've got as far as
"I love, you love, he loves," and so on. I think Dutch an extremely
interesting language.

The old man told us which way to go, and turning up a street we should
never have thought of, we came out in a huge market-place presided over
by a statue of Coen, a man who founded the Dutch dominion in the West
Indies, or something which Mr. van Buren thought important.

We have often wondered where the people of the towns hide themselves;
but there was no such puzzle in Hoorn. The market-place looked as if
half the population of North Holland might be there. The whole of the
square was covered with cheeses, large shiny cheeses, yellow as
monstrous oranges. They glittered so radiantly in the sunlight that you
felt they might at any instant burst out into a flame. Between the great
glowing mounds little paths had been left, and along these paths walked
lines of solemn men inspecting the burning globes and bargaining with
their possessors; while outside the huge, cheese-paved space there was a
moving crowd, gay and shifting as the figures made by bits of colored
glass in a kaleidoscope.

[Illustration: _Solemn men inspecting burning globes, and bargaining
with their possessors_]

We expected to create a sensation with the motor, but the cheeses were
more interesting, and nobody had time for more than a glance at us.
Suddenly, as we sat gazing at the scene, affairs in the market-place
came to some kind of crisis. A stream of men appeared, dressed in
spotless white from head to foot, and wearing varnished, hard straw hats
of different colors. Soon, we saw it was the hats which determined
everything. The blue-hatted men walked together; the red hats formed
another party; the yellow hats a third; and so on. Each corps carried
large yet shallow trays suspended from their shoulders--two men to a
tray--and falling upon the piles of cheeses they gathered them up with
incredible quickness. Then, when the trays were loaded with a pyramid of
cheeses, off rushed the men to a wonderful Weigh House which Mr. van
Buren says is famous throughout all North Holland. Inside were many men,
busy as bees, weighing cheeses with enormous scales. Down dropped the
trays; the weight was taken, and away darted the men bearing the yellow
treasures to some neighboring warehouse.

We watched the weighing for a long time, until we were so hungry that we
coul