Monarch: The Big Bear of Tallac

Abstract

THIS is a composite picture of a grizzly bear, or, more exactly, the personality of one remarkable bear still living in prison has been credited with the adventures of several of his kind. Beginning with the growth and education of the cub, the book tells the story of many ups and downs, such as the first sheep-stealing, the escape from the forest fire, the circumvention of the hunters; the affair of the ten-gallon empty sugar-keg with the delicious smell, into which the bear thrust his head; and the final capture (by means of drugged honey) of an adventurer with many aliases. Mr. Thompson Seton is a fine raconteur,, but we wish he had put a little more stuffing into the book; and his literary facility sometimes gets the better of his judgment. “And still he lives, but pacing—pacing—pacing—you may see him, scanning not the crowds, but something beyond the crowds, breaking down at times into petulant rages, but recovering anon his ponderous dignity, looking—waiting—watching—held ever by that Hope, that unknown Hope, that came.” Throughout the book we get glimpses of a river that does not reach the sea, and a poetic parallelism is sustained between river and bear—both ending in imprisonment. “The river, born in high Sierra's flank, that lived and rolled and grew, through mountain pines, o'erleaping man-made barriers, then to reach with growing power the plains and bring its mighty flood at last to the Bay of Bays, a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the Golden Gate, seeking forever Freedom's Blue, seeking and raging—raging and seeking—back and forth, forever—in vain.” So with the bear. The book as delightfully printed and got up, and many of the thumb-nail drawings are very graphic. We are told on what pages they occur and on what pages the chapters begin and end, but there is no pagination!

Monarch: The Big Bear of Tallac.

By Ernest Thompson Seton. Pp. 215. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1920.) Price 7s. 6d. net