APPENZELL (for derivation see below), one of the twenty-two cantons of the Swiss Confederation, is an alpine region, with an area of about 152 square miles, entirely surrounded by the canton of St Gall. The mountains in the south attain a considerable elevation, the highest, Mount Sentis, being 8215 feet in height, and reaching the region of perpetual snow; but towards the north the surface is composed of’mere hills and hollows, some of the hills being rather remarkable for their conical shape. The canton is watered by a tributary of the Thur, the Sitter, which takes its rise from a glacier on Mount Sentis, its affluent the Urnäsch, and a number of mountain streams. It was at one time almost covered with forests of fir and pine; but in consequence of the extension of the population, these have been greatly diminished. Peat and wood for fuel are abundant. The climate is cold and variable, but not unhealthy. Subject like the rest of Switzerland to the Franks in the 8th century, Appenzell gradually passed into the hands of the abbots of St Gall; in 1401 it rebelled against what had become an ecclesiastical tyranny; and in 1513 it was admitted into the Swiss Confederation. The violent struggles which followed the Reformation led to its division, in 1597, into two parts—the Inner Rhodes (a word of military origin, like the German Rotte), in the south, being appropriated to the Roman Catholics, and the Outer Rhodes, in the north, to the Protestants. This distinction has continued to the present day; the census of 1870 giving the number of Protestants in the Catholic district as only 188, and of Catholics in the Protestant, 2358. Until 1848, indeed, no Protestants, or even Catholic aliens, were allowed to settle in Inner Rhodes. The chief town of that division is ...