lay in Senator Vest. So after years of struggle the right
triumphed, and the contract intended to be made between
the Interior Department and the corporation was never consummated.

This long fight made evident the dangers to which the
Park was exposed, and showed the necessity of additional
legislation.

A bill to protect the Park was drawn by Senator Vest and
passed by Congress, and from that time on, until the day
of his retirement from public life, Senator Vest was ever a
firm and watchful guardian of the Yellowstone National
Park, showing in this matter, as in many others, "the highest
patriotism and statesmanship." For many years, from
1882 to 1894, Senator Vest remained the chief defender of a
National possession that self-seeking persons in many parts
of the country were trying to use for their own profit.

[Illustration: W. Hallett Phillips]

[Illustration: GEORGE GRAHAM VEST.]

If we were asked to mention the two men who did more
than any other two men to save the National Park for the
American people, we should name George Graham Vest and
William Hallett Phillips, co-workers in this good cause.
There were other men who helped them, but these two easily
stand foremost.

In the light of the present glorious development of the Park it can be
said of each one who has taken part in the work of preserving for all
time this great national pleasuring ground for the enjoyment of the
American people, "He builded better than he knew."

An amusing feature of the identity of my name with the Park was that my
friends, with a play upon my initials, frequently addressed letters to
me in the following style:

[Illustration: National Park Langford]

The fame of the Yellowstone National Park, combining the most extensive
aggregation of wonders in the world--wonders unexcelled because nowhere
else existing--is now world-wide. The "Wonderland" publications issued
by the Northern Pacific Railway, prepared under the careful supervision
of their author, Olin D. Wheeler, with their superb illustrations of the
natural scenery of the park, and the illustrated volume, "The
Yellowstone," by Major Hiram M. Chittenden, U.S. Engineers, under whose
direction the roads and bridges throughout the Park are being
constructed, have so confirmed the first accounts of these wonders that
there remains now little of the incredulity with which the narrations of
the members of our company were fi