VALAIS (Ger. Wallis), a frontier canton of Switzerland, bounded on the n. by the cantons of Vaud and Bern, and on the s. by Italy. Area, 2,020 sq.m.; pop.'76, 100,490. It forms one long and deep valley, included between two of the loftiest mountain chains of Europe—the Pennine and the Bernese Alps—and is drained by the Upper Rhone, which, rising at its north-eastern extremity, in the glacier of the Gallenstock, falls at the western boundary of the canton iuta the lake of Geneva. No European territory is more completely isolated by mountains; and it is rendered still more inaccessible by trans verse chains, between which are inclosed narrow valleys. The greater part of the sur face consists of barren mountain slopes; in their higher elevations, covered with the greatest of the Swiss glaciers. The forests and pasture-lands supply the inhabitants with their chief occupations. But grain-cultivation is not absent; the chief agricultural tract being the level ground, from a quarter of a m. to 3 m. wide, which lies along the, main channel of the river. Here corn enough is grown to supply the wants of the inhabit ants. The heat at the bottom of the valley is intense in summer, and Indian corn and the vine are grown with great success. The Valais opens into the lake of Geneva, and is connected by great high-roads, and now by railway, with the other parts of French Switzerland and Savoy. The Grimsel and Gemmi passes connect the eastern part of the valley with German Switzerland; and the Great St. Bernard and Simplon (q.v.) passes
connect it with Italy. Formerly the cattle, the chief export of Valais, were driven over the Simplon into Italy; but now the railway, which ascends the valley to beyond Sion, on the Simplon road, threatens to divert this trade to western Switzerland and France. The inhabitants of the upper Valais—one-third of the population—speak German; those of the lower Valais, the Vaudois dialect of French. The line which separates the two languages lies along the ridges running n, from the Matterhorn to a point a little to the e. of Leuk. All the inhabitants are Roman Catholic. The Valais is subdivided into dixaines, each of which has its council, and may be said to form a republic. Each of the dixaines sends four members to a larger council or diet meeting at Sion. The upper part of the Valais, throughout the middle ages, acknowledged a very slight feudal dependence on the German empire; the lower part belonged to Savoy. At the period of the struggle of the Swiss with the duke of Burgundy, the upper Valais took posses sion of the lower Valais, and reduced it to the position of a vassal state; and in this condition it remained until 1798, the period of French conquest, when the distinction was set aside. As stated in the article SWITZERLAND, under the recent constitution, the suffrage was extended to the whole population of Valais, with results little expected by the liberal party in the Swiss diet. Sion (q.v.) and Martigny (q.v.) are the chief towns.