Barnum’s renewed enterprise and the publicity which came to him by reason of his past reputation contributed largely to the rejuvenation of the Museum, until as a source of profit it was as valuable as it had ever been. Sometimes Barnum was lucky enough to gain publicity from deceptions practised upon him as well as by means of his own deceptions. His famous Cherry-Colored Cat was an example of both forms of deception in one. A farmer visited the Museum one day and informed Greenwood that he had a cherry-colored cat, which he would sell for twenty-five dollars. Greenwood agreed in writing to pay that amount, providing the cat was not artificially colored. The farmer returned with a handsome black cat, and told Greenwood calmly that his cat was the color of black cherries. Greenwood refused to pay for this deception, but as soon as Barnum heard about it he was delighted at a joke he might have perpetrated himself and insisted that the practical joker was worthy of his hire. He got back his twenty-five dollars by exhibiting the cat in a paper bag as a mysterious novelty, a Cherry-Colored Cat. He fooled his patrons precisely as the farmer had fooled his manager. In 1861 Barnum created a sensation with whales. He learned that fishermen had caught a white whale at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, and he hurried to Canada to arrange for the capture alive of a pair of white whales for his Museum. Barnum witnessed the capture and arranged for the transportation of his whales, and then he started back to New York. On the way he informed telegraph operators that they might take from the wire any news about whales addressed to P. T. Barnum and give it out to their townspeople. The result was a triumphal procession seven hundred miles long, with plenty of attendant publicity, when the white whales started on their journey. People gathered at all the railroad stations to catch a glimpse of the white whales in their long boxes, filled with sea weed and salt water. Before he left Quebec, Barnum wrote accounts of the capture and shipment of the whales for the Quebec and Montreal newspapers, and these were copied in other papers. Despatches telling the progress of the trip were posted on bulletin boards outside the Museum in New York, and the excitement in the city was great. When the whales were finally deposited in their tank, built specially for their reception in the basement of the Museum, thousands rushed to see them.