While Barnum was traveling in this country with General Tom Thumb in the summer of 1848, he saw in Cincinnati what was to become one of his best known curiosities and shams. A woolly horse was announced for exhibition in Cincinnati, and Barnum, ever on the alert for Museum material, inspected the freak of nature. He was a small, well-formed animal with no mane and very little hair on his tail, but the body and legs were completely covered with a natural growth of curly, thick hair, similar to sheep’s wool. Barnum saw excellent possibilities in this animal, if he was properly exploited by opportune publicity. He purchased the woolly horse and sent him to Bridgeport, to be kept in strict retirement until the proper occasion for his début should present itself. Barnum knew that a woolly horse exhibited at the Museum would be nothing but another curiosity, and his unfailing instinct for appropriate publicity told him that if The Woolly Horse were to become a phenomenon, he must be tied to a public event. Not long after Barnum bought The Woolly Horse, Colonel Frémont was lost in the Rocky Mountains. The whole country was interested in his fate, and news of his expedition was telegraphed everywhere every day. It was feared that he and his party had died during the severe winter in the mountains. Finally, after weeks of public anxiety, news of Colonel Frémont’s safety came from the West and was telegraphed throughout the country. The public was relieved, and thankful for a new hero. Barnum saw his opportunity. The Woolly Horse was led out of the Bridgeport barn, covered with blankets and leggins to conceal his unique features, and shipped to New York, where he remained in an obscure livery stable until Barnum’s publicity was ripe. The next despatches to the New York newspapers from the West announced that Colonel Frémont had captured near the Gila River a most extraordinary animal, who had no mane and no hair on his tail, but whose body was covered with a thick coat of wool. The despatches added that the Colonel had sent the animal to the United States Quartermaster General as a token of his esteem. Two days later this advertisement appeared in the New York newspapers: