To earth flew fleet Charon, to regions of ice;
He found these too cold--so away in a trice
He sought a location in Africa's sands,
He prospected, and finding too much on his hands,
He cut out Australia, Siberia, too,
The north part of China--no! they would not do;
Till, just as about to relinquish the chase,
He stumbled upon a most singular place,
'Twas deep in the midst of a mountainous range,
Surrounded by valleys secluded and strange,
In a country the greatest, the grandest, the best
To be found upon earth--America's West.
Here the crust seemed quite thin, and the purified air,
With the chemicals hidden around everywhere,
Would soon make the lakes that the Devil desired;
So he flew to Chicago, and there to him wired:
"I've found you a place never looked at before;
You may heat up the rocks, turn on water, and bore."
Then the Devil with mortals kept plying the fire,
Extracting the water around from the mire,
And boring great holes with a terrible dust,
Till soon quite a number appeared near the crust,
Then he turned on the steam--and lo! upward did fly,
Through rents in the surface, the rocks to the sky.
Then with a rumble there came from each spot,
Huge volumes of water remarkably hot,
That had been there in caverns since Lucifer fell--
Thus immensely enlarging the confines of Hell,
And it happens that now when Old Charon brings in
A remarkable load of original sin,
That His Majesty quietly rakes up the coals,
And up spouts the water, in jets, through the holes,
One may tell by the number of spurts when they come,
How many poor mortals the Devil takes home.
But Yankees can sometimes, without doing evil,
O'ermatch in sagacity even the Devil.
For not long ago Uncle Sam came that way
And said to himself, "Here's the Devil to pay.
Successful I've been in all previous wars;
Now Satan shall bow to the Stripes and the Stars.
This property's mine, and I hold it in fee;
And all of this earth shall its majesty see.
The deer and the elk unmolested shall roam,
The bear and the buffalo each have a home;
The eagle shall spring from her eyrie and soar
O'er crags in the canyons where cataracts roar;
The wild fowls shall circle the pools in their flight,
The geysers shall flash in the moonbeams at night,
Now I christen the country--let all nations hark!
I name it the Yellowstone National Park."
--WM. TOD HELMUTH.
(Reprinted from Haynes' Guide of Yellowstone National Park).
[Illustration: Administration Building, Zarephath Bible Institute and
Zarephath Academy, Zarephath, N. J.]
ZAREPHATH BIBLE INSTITUTE
ZAREPHATH, N. J.
ALMA WHITE (Bishop Pillar of Fire Church), _Founder_.
REV. RAY B. WHITE, A. B., _President_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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