MONARCH: the Big Bear of Tallac

Ernest Thompson Seton's book, "Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac." Published in 1919, it tells the story of a tiny Grizzly cub who grew to be the Monarch of the Plains -- and the Prisoner of humanity's arrogance.

"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 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. ... 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."

- Ernest Thompson Seton