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