It was a bright, beautiful Sunday morning that we arrived at Muskoka, and soon after daylight we had our tents pitched.  As we had all day Sunday to rest, pa suggested that it would be a good idea to take all our animals that eat grass out on the grazing ground on the edge of the town and let them fill up on the nice blue grass that was knee-high all over the country.  So after breakfast we detailed men to take charge of the different animals, and herd them out in the tall grass.  It was a beautiful sight to see those rare animals, gathered from all over the world, eating grass together, in perfect peace, in this new country.  The animals that we thought would stand without hitching, like the elephants, were cared for by their attendants, but the animals that might wander from their own fireside, were picketed out, or held by long ropes, the deer, the buffalo, the zebras, the sacred cattle, the elk, the yaks, the camels and that kind, were tied with long lariats, and held by the men detailed by the managers.  For a couple of hours the animals just gorged themselves, after they had kicked up their heels a spell and rolled in the grass.  Then one of the elephants got up on his hind feet and held up two toes, like boys in school hold up two fingers when they want to go in swimming, and the elephant started for a creek and went in the water, and the whole herd followed, and they spattered each other, and ducked and rolled around just like school boys.  The whole population of the town, whites and Indians, came to the bank of the river to watch the fun.

Pa was holding his elk by a rope and one of the managers had a rope around the neck of a giraffe:  the treasurer and the ticket taker was leading the zebras, and everybody was busy with some kind of animal, and I had a rope around an antelope, and some of our men on horseback were herding the buffaloes.  It didn’t seem as though anything wrong could happen.  The elephants wouldn’t come out of the creek, so the boss canvasman went over to where there were about 500 cowboys and Indians on horseback, and asked them to ride into the creek and drive the elephants out where the rest of the animals were, on the prairie.

Gee, but that was the greatest mistake he could have made.  The men on horseback didn’t want any better fun, so they made a charge, in line of battle, just like Sheridan’s cavalry, down the bank, into the creek, yelling and waving lariat ropes, and snapping whips and the elephants got out of that creek in a hurry.  The cowboys threw lassoes over the hind feet of the elephants, and tried to hold them, and the elephants bellowed, and dragged the cowboys and their ponies right amongst the other animals, and in about a minute, as the boss canvasman said when he came to, and they were picking the cactus thorns out of him:  “Hell was just plumb out for noon.”

The buffaloes smelled the Indians, and they started to stampede, like they used to do when they lived on the plains, and all the animals followed, dragging the men who had hold of their ropes, and away we all went over a rise of ground, the zebras in the lead and the elephants fetching up the rear, the cowboys and Indians behind, yelling and ki-i-ing, and more than 500 Indian dogs barking.