with them and stated that from the description given by them and by members of Mr. Langford’s party, the whole region should be made into a National Park and no private proprietorship be allowed.

I was elected Delegate to Congress from Montana in August, 1871, and after the election, Nathaniel P. Langford, Cornelius Hedges and myself had a consultation in Helena, and agreed that every effort should be made to establish the Park as soon as possible, and before any person had got a serious foot-hold—­Mr. McCartney, at the Mammoth Hot Springs, being the only one who at that time had any improvements made.  In December, 1871, Mr. Langford came to Washington and remained there for some time, and we two counseled together about the Park project.  I drew the bill to establish the Park, and never knew Professor Hayden in connection with that bill, except that I requested Mr. Langford to get from him a description of the boundaries of the proposed Park.  There was some delay in getting the description, and my recollection is that Langford brought me the description after consultation with Professor Hayden.  I then filled the blank in the bill with the description, and the bill passed both Houses of Congress just as it was drawn and without any change or amendment whatsoever.

After the bill was drawn, Langford stated to me that Senator Pomeroy of Kansas was very anxious to have the honor of introducing the bill in the Senate; and as he (Pomeroy) was the chairman of the Senate committee on Public Lands, in order to facilitate its passage, I had a clean copy made of the bill and on the first call day in the House, introduced the original there, and then went over to the Senate Chamber and handed the copy to Senator Pomeroy, who immediately introduced it in the Senate.  The bill passed the Senate first and came to the House, and passed the House without amendment, at a time when I happened to be at the other end of the Capitol, and hence I was not present when it actually passed the House.

Since the passage of this bill there have been so many men who have claimed the exclusive credit for its passage, that I have lived for twenty years, suffering from a chronic feeling of disgust whenever the subject was mentioned.  So far as my personal knowledge goes, the first idea of making it a public park occurred to myself; but from information received from Langford and others, it has always been my opinion that Hedges, Langford, and myself formed the same idea about the same time, and we all three acted together in Montana, and afterwards Langford and I acted with Professor Hayden in Washington, in the winter of 1871-2.

The fact is that the matter was well under way before Professor Hayden was ever heard of in connection with that measure.  When he returned to Washington in 1871, he brought with him a large number of specimens from different parts of the Park, which were on exhibition in one of the rooms