GRI'SONS (Ger. GranMinden), the largest and the most thinly peopled of all the can tons of Switzerland, is bounded on the n. by St. Glarus, St. Gall, and the Vorarlberg; on the e. by the Tyrol; on the s. by Lombardy; and on the w. by Uri and Ticino. Its area is 2,770 sq.m.; its population 1877, 92,106, of whom about 40,000 are Catholics. The canton divides itself naturally into three great valley-districts, of which the first and most important lies along the course of the Rhine, and stretches northward, occupying nearly the whole of the western portion of the canton; and the second, forming the Engadine (q.v.), extends n.e. along the course of the Inn. The third valley-district com prises several smaller valleys whose streams run southward, belonging to the basins of the Ticino and the Adda. The whole canton is an assemblage of mountains intersected by narrow valleys. The climate is very varied, in some districts winter reigns for nearly eight months, while some of the southern valleys resemble Italy. In the colder districts, scanty crops of barley and rye are raised with difficulty; while in the southern valleys, wheat, maize, and also the vine, fig, and almond are successfully cultivated. Pastures and forests occupy a large portion of the canton; and cattle, timber, and cheese are the principal exports. Iron, lead, copper, zinc, and silver are worked. The rivers abound in salmon and trout, and in the mountains are bears, wolves, lynxes, and wild-cats.
The country was anciently inhabited by the Rhtetii, who are by some connected with the Etruscans (see Errntritta). It was conquered by the Roman emperor Constan
tino in the 4th c., and his camp (Curia, Chur, Coin, the name of the present capital) was planted on the Rhine. Chur has been a bishopric since 450 A.D. In the 10th c. the country of the Grisons was added to the German empire, and remained till 1268 subject to the Swabian dukes. With the decay of the imperial authority it came to be oppressed by a numerous nobility, the ruins of whose castles still crown the heights. Against them the people began, in the end of the 14th c., to form leagues in the different val leys. One of these leagues, formed in 1424, was called the gray league (Ger. der grave band; in the native language, lia Grischa), from the gray homespun worn by the union ists, and hence the German and French names of the canton—Graubilndten and Grisons. In 1472 these separate unions entered into a general federation, which then formed an alliance with the Swiss cantons. It was not till 1803 that Grisons was admit ted into the Swiss confederation as the 15th canton. The constitution cf Grisons is very complicated, and suffers from the want of centralization incident to its origin. Of the inhabitants, one-half speak German, and the others dialects derived from Latin. The dialects of the southern valleys are a kind of Italian; the Latin of the Engadine (q.v.) and the Romanese differ greatly from Italian, but are far from being Latin.