One neighbour, the largest cattle-ranch in the world, owning some 200,000 head, was estimated to have lost at least 20,000.

And meantime how were affairs going in my little place?
It will seem incredible, but what is here written is absolute truth.

The loco was belly high; the self-weaned calves could be seen wading through it; but ne'er a nibbled or eaten plant could be found.

I often searched carefully for such dreaded signs but happily always failed: and I did not lose a single cow, calf or steer, nor were any found showing the slightest signs of being affected.
Many reasons were advanced for the miraculous escape of these cattle; people from a hundred miles away came to see and learn the reason.

No satisfactory explanation was suggested, and finally they were compelled to accept my own one, and agree that leaving the cattle undisturbed by abandoning the fall round-up was the real solution of the problem.