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Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac By: Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) |
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With 100 Drawings by Ernest Thompson Seton Author of
Wild Animals I have known
Trail of the Sandhill Stag
Biography of a Grizzly
Lives of the Hunted.
Two Little Savages. Etc. 1919
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED To the memory of the days in Tallac's Pines, where by the fire I heard
this epic tale. Kind memory calls the picture up before me now, clear, living clear: I
see them as they sat, the one small and slight, the other tall and
brawny, leader and led, rough men of the hills. They told me this
tale in broken bits they gave it, a sentence at a time. They were
ready to talk but knew not how. Few their words, and those they used
would be empty on paper, meaningless without the puckered lip, the
interhiss, the brutal semi snarl restrained by human mastery, the snap
and jerk of wrist and gleam of steel gray eye, that really told the
tale, of which the spoken word was mere headline. Another, a subtler
theme was theirs that night; not in the line but in the interline it
ran; and listening to the hunter's ruder tale, I heard as one may hear
the night bird singing in the storm; amid the glitter of the mica I
caught the glint of gold, for theirs was a parable of hill born power
that fades when it finds the plains. They told of the giant redwood's
growth from a tiny seed; of the avalanche that, born a snowflake,
heaves and grows on the peaks, to shrink and die on the level lands
below. They told of the river at our feet: of its rise, a thread like
rill, afar on Tallac's side, and its growth a brook, a stream, a
little river, a river, a mighty flood that rolled and ran from hills
to plain to meet a final doom so strange that only the wise believe.
Yes, I have seen it; it is there to day the river, the wonderful
river, that unabated flows, but that never reaches the sea. I give you the story then as it came to me, and yet I do not give it,
for theirs is a tongue unknown to script: I give a dim translation;
dim, but in all ways respectful, reverencing the indomitable spirit of
the mountaineer, worshiping the mighty Beast that nature built a
monument of power, and loving and worshiping the clash, the awful
strife heroic, at the close, when these two met.
In this Book the designs for cover, title page, and general make up
were done by Grace Gallatin Seton.
List of Full Page Drawings "The pony bounded in terror while the Grizzly ran almost alongside" "Jack ate till his paunch looked like a rubber balloon" "'Honey Jacky honey'" "Jack ... held up his sticky, greasy arms" The Thirty foot Bear "'Now, B'ar, I don't want no scrap with you'" "Rumbling and snorting, he made for the friendly hills" Monarch List of The Chapters
I. The Two Springs II. The Springs and the Miner's Dam III. The Trout Pool IV. The Stream that Sank in the Sand V. The River Held in the Foothills VI. The Broken Dam VII. The Freshet VIII. Roaring in the Canon IX. Fire and Water X. The Eddy XI. The Ford XII. Swirl and Pool and Growing Flood XIII. The Deepening Channel XIV. The Cataract XV. The Foaming Flood XVI. Landlocked FOREWORD
The story of Monarch is founded on material gathered from many sources
as well as from personal experience, and the Bear is of necessity a
composite. The great Grizzly Monarch, still pacing his prison floor at
the Golden Gate Park, is the central fact of the tale. In telling it I have taken two liberties that I conceive to be proper
in a story of this sort. First, I have selected for my hero an unusual individual. Second, I have ascribed to that one animal the adventures of several
of his kind. The aim of the story is to picture the life of a Grizzly with the
added glamour of a remarkable Bear personality. The intention is to
convey the known truth. But the fact that liberties have been taken
excludes the story from the catalogue of pure science. It must be
considered rather an historical novel of Bear life. Many different Bears were concerned in the early adventures here
related, but the last two chapters, the captivity and the despair of
the Big Bear, are told as they were told to me by several witnesses,
including my friends the two mountaineers... Continue reading book >>
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