The genial superintendent, Mr. Ward, spoke of his rambles up the picturesque shores of the inlet and his adventures since he had started his new enterprise. A trip of a few days before up one of the diminutive valleys drained by a little Alpine brook, had rewarded him with the sight of no less than eight bears scurrying around through the woods. He had an Indian companion who was armed with a flintlock, smooth bore Hudson Bay Company musket, while the superintendent had a shot gun for any small game that might happen along, and even with these arms they succeeded in bagging a bear apiece, both being of the black--or small--variety. Hunting the little black bear is not far removed from a good old-fashioned "coon" hunt, and not much more dangerous. The dogs, mostly the sharp-eared, sharp-nosed and sharp-barking Indian variety, once after a bear, force him up a tree to save his hamstrings being nipped uncomfortably, and then he is shot out of it, at the hunter's leisure, and if wounded is so small and easily handled by the pack of dogs that he can hardly be called dangerous. Not so, however, with the great brown bear, or barren-ground bear of Alaska, so often spoken of in these parts as the "grizzly" from his similarity in size and savageness to "the California King of the Chaparral." Everywhere in his dismal dominions he is religiously avoided by the native Nimrod, who declares that his meat is not fit to be eaten, that his robe is almost worthless, and that he constantly keeps the wrong end presented to his pursuers. Although he is never hunted encounters with him are not altogether unknown, as he is savage enough to become the hunter himself at times, and over some routes the Indians will never travel unless armed so as to be fairly protected from this big Bruin. This Indian fear of the great brown bear I found to be co-extensive with all my travels in Alaska and the British North-west Territory. Mr. Ward told me that wherever the big bear was found, the little black variety made his presence scarce, as the two in no way affiliate, and the latter occupies such country as the abundance of his big brother will allow. These districts may be intermixed as much as the black and white squares on a chess-board, but they are as sharply, though not as mathematically, defined, each one remaining faithfully on his own color, so to speak. A new repeating rifle was on our vessel consigned to the sportsman superintendent, and he expected to decrease the bear census during the summer, so far as his duties would allow. About noon, after much backing and putting of lines ashore, and working on them from the donkey engines fore and aft, we succeeded in turning our long steamer in the narrow channel, the pilot remarking in reply to the captain's inquiries as to shoals, that he wished he could exchange the depth for the width and he would have no trouble in turning around.