Starting at 8:10 A.M., next morning, from Camp 33, at 11:30 we passed a good sized river coming in from the west, which I named the Cone-Hill River, from the fact that there is a prominent conical hill in the center of its broad valley, near the mouth.
Just beyond the mouth of the Cone-Hill River we suddenly came in sight of some four or five black and brown bears in an open or untimbered space of about an acre or two on the steep hillsides of the western slope. The raft was left to look after itself and we gave them a running volley of skirmish fire that sent them scampering up the steep hill into the dense brush and timber, their principal loss being loss of breath. By not attending to the navigation of our craft in the excitement of the short bear hunt we ran on a submerged rock in a current so swift that we swung around so rapidly as almost to throw a number of us overboard, stuck for a couple of minutes with the water boiling over the stern, and in general lost our faith in the ability of our vessel to navigate itself. In a previous chapter I have mentioned having been told by a person in southern Alaska, undoubtedly conscientious in his statement, and having considerable experience as a hunter, that the black and brown bear of his district never occupied the same localities, and although the sequence of these localities might be as promiscuous as the white and black squares on a checker-board, yet each species remained wholly on his own color, so to speak; and this led him to believe that the weaker of the two, the black bear, had good reason to be afraid of his more powerful neighbor. This day's observation of the two species living together, in one very small area, shows either an error of judgment on the part of the observer mentioned, or a difference of the ursine nature in different regions.
After leaving the Stewart River, which had been identified by a sort of _reductio ad absurdum_ reasoning, I found it absolutely impossible to identify any of the other streams from the descriptions and maps now in existence, even when aided by the imperfect information derived from the local tribes. Indianne, my Chilkat-Tahk-heesh interpreter, got along very well among the latter tribe. Among the Ayans were many who spoke Tahk-heesh, with whom they traded, and here we had but little trouble. Even lower down we managed to get along after a fashion, for one or two of the Ayan medicine-men who came as far as Fort Reliance with us, could occasionally be found, and they understood the lower languages pretty fairly, and although we struggled through four or five tongues we could still make out that tea and tobacco were the leading topics of conversation everywhere. Beyond Fort Reliance, and after bidding adieu to our four Ayans, we were almost at sea, but occasionally in the most roundabout way we managed to elicit information of a limited character.