uished engineers in the army
and navy, have been in favor of a lock canal, and almost without
exception have reported upon the feasibility of a lock canal across the
Isthmus and upon its advantages to commerce and navigation, and in
military and naval operations in case of war. The Nicaragua Canal, as
recommended to Congress and as favored by the first Walker Commission,
provided for a lock project far more complex than the proposition now
under consideration.

Colonel Totten, who built the Panama railroad, recommended as early as
1857 the construction of a lock canal; Naval Commissioner Lull, who made
a careful survey of the Isthmus in 1874, recommended a lock canal with a
summit level of 124 feet and with 24 locks. Admiral Ammen, who, by
authority of the Secretary of War, attended the Isthmian Congress of
1879, favored a lock project, in strong opposition to the visionary plan
of De Lesseps. Admiral Selfridge and many other naval officers who have
been connected with Isthmian surveying and exploration have never, to my
knowledge, by as much as a word expressed their apprehensions regarding
the feasibility or practicability of a lock canal.

As a matter of fact and canal history, the lock project has very
properly been considered "an American conception of the proper treatment
of the Panama canal problem." Mr. C.D. Ward, an American engineer of
great ability, as early as 1879 suggested a plan almost identical with
the one now recommended by the minority of the Consulting Board,
including a dam at Gatun, instead of Bohio or Gamboa; and, in the words
of a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Mr.
Welsh, "The first thought of an American engineer on looking at M. De
Lesseps' raised map is to convert the valley of the lower Chagres into
an artificial lake some twenty miles long by a dam across the valley at
or near a point where the proposed canal strikes it, a few miles from
Colon, such as was advocated by C.D. Ward in 1879." The site referred
to was Gatun, and this was written in 1880, when the sea-level project
had full sway.

So that it is going entirely too far to say that all naval commanders
and commercial masters are in favor of the sea-level project. Admiral
Walker himself, as president of the former Isthmian Commission, and as
president of the Nicaraguan Board, favored a lock canal. Eminent army
engineers, like Abbot, Hains, Ernst, and others, favor the lock project.
It requires no very