Animals: Potentate’s End

On July 24, 1922 Seattle witnessed a memorable wedding. A thousand spectators were present in Woodland Park Zoo. The city’s Nile Temple of the Mystic Shrine had outdone itself in pageantry. In first, attended by a burro named Nazimova, marched Potentate, young male camel lately imported from Shanghai by Shriner Hugh Caldwell, onetime Mayor of Seattle. He was joined by Nile, a female camel also brought from Shanghai by the Shrine, attended by a pony named Marguerite. When Imperial Potentate James McCandless of Hawaii pronounced them camel & wife, Potentate turned, gravely munched Nile’s topknot bouquet of sweet peas.

Last week in Woodland Park, having marched in many a Shrine parade and been ridden by 24,380 children. Potentate died, aged 15. Buried without ceremony, he was survived by Nile and by their husky nine-year-old son, Outer Guard.