A LABRADOR SPRING 



enough, this variety had never been found 

 east of the Rocky Mountains before. 



As in the Doone valley so here in Labrador 

 the words of John Ridd were appropriate, for 

 " the spring was in our valley now, creeping 

 first for shelter slyly in the pause of the bluster- 

 ing wind. . . . There she stayed and held 

 her revel, as soon as the fear of frost was gone ; 

 all the air was a fount of freshness, and the 

 earth of gladness, and the laughing waters 

 prattled of the kindness of the sun." 



On this day also a snowbank which had cov- 

 ered a steep slope of Esquimaux Island, and 

 into which I had plunged to my waist in as- 

 cending to the higher land on May 25th, was 

 now breathing its last. I use this metaphor ad- 

 visedly, for much of the snow must disappear 

 by evaporation, and what melts does not all 

 stream down the hillside, but is largely absorbed, 

 as if in a great sponge, by the lichens and mosses. 

 These plants fulfil here the boy's definition 

 of a sponge as the only article with a bottom 

 full of holes that holds water. It is not, how- 

 ever, fair to say that these mosses had no 

 bottom, for, during the spring at least, they 

 are underlaid by hard ice. For example, on 



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