Alkmaar, and not Edam, is the geographical and industrial center of the cheese trade of North Holland, and the cheese market is the geographical and industrial center of Alkmaar. To give some idea of the length of time they have been marketing cheeses in Alkmaar you will be told upon inquiry that the town weigh-house was constructed in 1582, and for no other purpose than to weigh the cheeses bought and sold at the weekly market. To give some idea of the town’s importance as a cheese center, the astonishing number of forty-odd million pounds of round, golden cheeses are bargained for at the side of the weigh-house in every twelve months. In addition to the weigh-house the town boasts of but few historically remunerative objects of interest. There is the old Church of St. Lawrence, built in 1470, the surrounding walls and buttresses of which protect a part of the eminent remains of Floris V, Count of Holland and builder of the Hall of the Knights at The Hague, although why they were interred at such a distance to the north of the scenes of his activity is a matter of some conjecture; there are a few relics and mediocre paintings on show in the Municipal Museum; and there is the old water gate that seems to forbid any farther penetration into the town on the part of the packet from Amsterdam. In history Alkmaar played its solemn rôle by making a stubborn and ultimately successful resistance against the besieging Spaniards in 1573. Five to one were the odds against which the burghers fought and, as at Leyden, the water of the ocean was the all-powerful lever that rewarded the besieged and routed the besiegers.