LIARD POST

EVERYTHING surged and ran and leaped. There was
a glare of sunlight, and then the grey blindness of
spray; the breath-taking smack of cold water; wet
shirts flapping and clinging; then sunlight again,
and a cold wind blowing against wet faces and drip-
ping hair. Beyond the last rapids of the Dease River
the water flowed out smooth and wide and swift
to join the Liard. Across to the left, on a high bench,
sat the small white buildings of the Post.

Before our faces were dry we were standing be-
neath the farther bank of the Liard, shaking hands
with the Hudson’s Bay manager. He led the way
up a slanting path to the top, and paused there.

Three or four wooden buildings stood in a row
on a flat, wide terrace where the grass was new and
green. Behind them there was a patch of cultivated
ground trailing off into low scrub-growth that
stretched back to the margin of the forest. In front
of them the Upper Liard ran full and silty beneath
the bank, coming between tall cliffs from the north.
A wedge of land bristling with spruce separated its

waters from those of the Dease, and tapered to a
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