_26th._ A fine day at last, and we see the Alps unveiled for the first time since we have been here. I thought I should have seen them quite free from snow, and was not a little surprised, on the clearing away of the clouds, to find them covered with a newly fallen crest, which was brilliantly white, for I believed that the temperature of the air would be too high to allow the snow, which falls on the heights when it rains in the valleys, to remain unmelted even for the shortest time. In the afternoon I took a ramble with the postmaster, as a guide, to see a waterfall in the neighbourhood, which I suspected from what he told me was the feeder of the pond from which the Wurzen-Save rises. After a long walk through the woods in one of the smaller side valleys, at the opening of which the pond or source of the Save is situated, we arrived at the end of the valley, where all progress was put an end to by the lofty and rocky mountains which shut it in on all sides; mountains, through which there is hardly a path for the most adventurous chamois hunter. In the centre of this vale is a hut, or, as it is called by the peasants, an _Alpe_, (a hut on the mountains,) built with the trunks of trees, in which a few cowherds were employed in making cheese. Opposite this hut, high up in the rocks, is a considerable cascade, which without doubt is the source of the Save. The water issues in a considerable stream from an opening in the side of the mountain, and rushes down into the valley foaming and dashing over the rocks; it then flows on for a short time in a bed of limestone pebbles, where it suddenly disappears, sinking into the ground, and in all probability continues its subterraneous course through the whole length of the valley, till it rises in the pond near Wurzen. We ascended with considerable difficulty to the top of the fall, and in order to examine the hole, I was obliged to take off my shoes to prevent my slipping over the rocks. The water flowed perfectly clear and intensely cold from a reservoir in the interior of the mountain, but the opening in the rocks was not sufficiently large to enable me to look in. Having descended safely, and drank some curds and whey in the _Alpe_, we returned home; and I determined, if the weather should be fine to-morrow, to cross over the Alps to Trenta, and see the source of the Isonzo, to seek which we made such a long trip in vain the last time we were here.