The question was asked if the dyeing assisted in the preservation of the cheese or helped to keep it immune from mould or corrodings. Not at all. The ultimate consumer across the seas would turn up his nose at an un-dyed cheese and snub it as a cheap imitation. The foreign public demands that the genuine North Holland cheese bear a distinctive hall-mark. That hall-mark is its coat of red dye. Since this province probably supplies a good three-fifths of the 55,000 tons of cheese exported in a single year the reader can imagine what a deal of red dye it takes to satisfy a foreign fancy. A distance of thirty miles or more north of Alkmaar lies The Helder, figuratively the top of the kingdom. Geographically, it is only in the same latitude as the most northerly point of Newfoundland at the Straits of Belle Isle, and so there are plenty of towns over in Friesland and Groningen that lie still farther to the north, but these do not have the conditions to contend with that does The Helder. Surrounded on three sides by the waters of the Zuyder Zee and the North Sea, The Helder assumes much of the responsibility of protecting the whole province of North Holland from a general and disastrous inundation. More than any other part of the province, indeed of all Holland, it is exposed to the ravages of the most violent winds, which kick the sea into a maelstrom and pound it with relentless fury upon the coast line. [Illustration: At The Helder may be seen the “big story” of Holland--the dikes that represent the persistent, patient strife of the Dutch to hold the land made out of the sea bottom] Here at The Helder may be found the finest fruits of that “big story” of Holland: the constant battle of mere man against an all but omnipotent element--water; the romantic, persistent, patient strife of the Hollander to insure as much as possible his own safety and that of the land which he has weaned from the sea from utter and inexorable annihilation. If for nothing else, it is for this “big story” that one should go to The Helder. If the traveler through Holland has not been already duly impressed with the silent, continuous fight of the Dutch for mere existence, he will return from this northernmost promontory of North Holland with augmented faith in the ingenuity and dogged perseverance of the men who have made a country out of what once was sea bottom. The foregoing preamble is meant to prepare the traveler to appreciate The Helder. If it fails in its mission, it may be all for the best, because the unanticipated often strikes with the greatest degree of accuracy and forcefulness and brands the experience upon the mind, never to be obliterated.