[Illustration: Ernest Thompson Seton's Sketch of Monarch.]

The assignment was given to me because I was the only man on the paper
who was supposed to know anything about bears. Such knowledge as I
had, and it was not very extensive, had been acquired on hunting trips,
some successful and more otherwise, in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades.
I had had no experience in trapping, but I accepted the assignment with
entire confidence and great joy over the chance to get into the
mountains for a long outing. The outing proved to be much longer than
the editor expected, and trapping a bear quite a different matter from
killing one.

From Santa Paula, I struck into the mountains of Ventura county with an
outfit largely composed of information, advice and over-paid
assistance. The first two months of the trip were consumed in
developing the inaccuracy of most of the information and the utter
worthlessness of all the advice and costly assistance, and in acquiring
some rudimentary knowledge of the habits of bears and the art of
trapping them. Traps were built, under advice, where there was not one
chance in a thousand of catching anything, and bogus bear-tracks, made
with a neatly-executed model by an ingenious guide, who preferred
loafing about camp to moving it, kept the expedition from seeking more
promising country.

The editor became tired of waiting for his big sensation and ordered me
home. I respectfully but firmly refused to go home bearless, and the
editor fired me by wire. I fired the ingenious but sedentary
assistant, discarded all the advice that had been unloaded upon me by
the able bear-liars of Ventura, reduced my impedimenta to what one
lone, lorn burro could pack, broke camp and struck for a better Grizzly