terrace of the Casino about sunset to hear Tinpanni's band and eat a
bronze bowl of Kerosini's gooseberry fool. I spent a great deal of my
time exploring the chief glory of the town, the Casa Grande, which
stands on the colossal crag honeycombed underneath with the shafts and
vaults of the cheese mine. There is nothing in the world more entrancing
than to stand (with a vinaigrette at one's nose) on the ramp of the
Casa, looking down over the ochre canal, listening to the hoarse shouts
of the workmen as they toil with pick and shovel, laying bare some
particularly rich lode of the pale, citron-coloured cheese which will
some day make Strychnine a place of _pélérinage_ for all the world. _Pay
homage to the fromage_ is a rough translation of the motto of the town,
which is carved in old Gothic letters on the apse of the Casa itself.
Limberg, Gruyère, Alkmaar, Neufchâtel, Camembert and Hoboken--all these
famous cheeses will some day pale into whey before the puissance of the
Strychnine curd. I was signally honoured by an express invitation of the
burgomaster to be present at a meeting of the Cheesemongers' Guild at
the Rathaus. The Kurdmeister, who is elected annually by the town
council, spoke most eloquently on the future of the cheese industry, and
a curious rite was performed. Before the entrance of the ceremonial
cheese, which is cut by the Kurdmeister himself, all those present
donned oxygen masks similar to those devised by the English to combat
the German poison-gas. And I learned that oxygen helmets are worn by
the workmen in the quarries to prevent prostration.

It was with unfeigned regret that I found my fortnight over. I would
gladly have lingered in the medieval cloisters of the Gin Palace, and
sat for many mornings under the pistachio trees on the terrace sipping
my _verre_ of native wine. But duties recalled me to the beaten paths of
travel, and once more I drove in the old-fashioned ambulance to catch my
even more old-fashioned train. The B.V.D. trains only leave Strychnine