Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. It has a fourteenth century Gothic Groote Kerk, tremendous in comparison with its population, and a Town Hall in which are preserved the portraits of four or five erstwhile citizens of Edam, the respective virtues of whom its present inhabitants still like to mention as if they bore some weight upon the town’s past prosperity. One of these local celebrities was a man of the name of Osterlen, who, in the 1680’s, could boast about a merchant fleet of his own numbering ninety-two sail. Three of the others were Trijntje, Peter, and Jan. Trijntje (the diminutive in this case must have been merely a matter of irony) was said to have been nine feet in height and of proportionate width; Peter grew an ambiguous beard the dimensions of which required it to be tied into a knot in order to save it from being stepped on by its master; and Jan, an immigrant from Friesland who later procured papers of naturalization in Edam--a “ringer” we should have called him in small town baseball parlance--Jan’s net tonnage was four hundred and fifty-four pounds on the date when he launched himself into the forty-second year of his life. At Edam you will scramble into a little sailboat to be propelled by the breeze down the canal for a mile or more to Volendam. Each side of the ditch--it isn’t much more, if judged by its width; neither is its odor any sweeter--is bordered by low-lying fields populated with the black and white bovines directly responsible for the principal industry of that section. They look docile enough at a distance, these cows of North Holland, and they probably are at close range, when it comes to showing the proper deference due an unmolesting human being, but they are notorious for their biased aversion to dogs. The dog seems to be their time-honored and ancient enemy, and the mere presence of one in the field can cause a deal of agitation. If its owner accompanies the dog he may be expected to commence a Dutch Marathon almost any minute, because, at sight of him, the cow will foreclose with the canine and open speedy negotiations with the owner. I have been told that it is unsafe even to walk along the canal bank with a dog, for only during last summer one staid old burgher of Volendam, in so doing, was hooked to death, and two ladies of Edam, while taking an evening walk, had to be hustled into a passing sailboat and pushed out from shore to escape a similar fate.