hen the families come down from the hill chalets, where the air
is healthier, many very pretty faces may be seen among the younger
women, set off by somewhat more pains in adjustment of the singular
Valaisan costume than is now usual in other cantons of Switzerland.

Sec. 29. Secondly, it is a bishopric, and quite the centre of Romanism in
Switzerland, all the most definite Romanist doctrines being evidently
believed sincerely, and by a majority of the population; Protestantism
having no hold upon them at all; and republican infidelity, though
active in the councils of the commune, having as yet, so far as I could
see, little influence in the hearts of households. The prominence of the
Valais among Roman Catholic states has always been considerable. The
Cardinal of Sion was, of old, one of the personages most troublesome to
the Venetian ambassadors at the English Court.[104]

Sec. 30. Thirdly, it is in the midst of a marshy valley, pregnant with
various disease; the water either stagnant, or disgorged in wild
torrents charged with earth; the air, in the morning, stagnant also,
hot, close, and infected; in the afternoon, rushing up from the outlet
at Martigny in fitful and fierce whirlwind; one side of the valley in
almost continual shade, the other (it running east and west) scorched by
the southern sun, and sending streams of heat into the air all night
long from its torrid limestones; while less traceable plagues than any
of these bring on the inhabitants, at a certain time of life, violent
affections of goitre, and often, in infancy, cretinism. Agriculture is
attended with the greatest difficulties and despondencies; the land
which the labor of a life has just rendered fruitful is often buried in
an hour; and the carriage of materials, as well as the traversing of
land on the steep hill sides, attended with extraordinary fatigue.

Sec. 31. Owing to these various influences, Sion, the capital of the
district, presents one of the most remarkable scenes for the study of
the particular condition of human feeling at present under consideration
that I know among mountains. It consists of little more than one main
street, winding round the roots of two ridges of crag, and branching, on
the sides towards the rocks, into a few narrow lanes, on the other, into
spaces of waste ground, of which part serve for military exercises, part
are enclosed in an uncertain and vague way; a ditch half-filled up, or
wall half-broken down, s