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,