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 ina 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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