During the latter part of March, 1904, I was ordered to accompany the Commission to Panama as their sanitary adviser, and for the purpose of drawing up a scheme of sanitation whereby the force might be protected during the construction of the Canal. I requested that Medical Director John W. Ross, United States Navy, Major Louis A. La Garde, Surgeon, United States Army, and Major Cassius E. Gillette, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, be detailed to assist me. We went to Panama with the Commission, and were absent on this trip about a month looking into conditions and examining the locality. After much study and careful consideration, we submitted a report which embodied the organization which we thought necessary to accomplish the desired ends. The report also gave detailed estimate of the cost of this organization. The French Company still had possession, and their representatives were in charge when we made this visit. They treated us very hospitably, and we were their guests during our stay on the Isthmus. We were housed on the Atlantic side, in the building known as the De Lesseps Palace. There was, however, nothing palatial about this building. It was simply a good, comfortable, frame building, such as can be found on many of the well-to-do plantations in our southern states. De Lesseps is accused of having erected it at a cost of more than $100,000. As I afterwards came to be more familiar with the history of the French régime at Panama, I found that this was on a par with most of the other stories of French extravagance on the Isthmus, and had no more foundation in fact than many of the other tales that fill the books of a few of our American writers concerning the Canal, to the discredit of the French. On one occasion we were invited across the Isthmus to dine with the Administrator who was in charge of the work. It is somewhat startling to an inhabitant of the United States to contemplate traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific to keep a dinner engagement, but at Panama this was not unusual. We not only left the Atlantic in the afternoon and dined on the shores of the Pacific the same evening, but we returned from the Pacific and slept on the shores of the Atlantic that same night. I was familiar with the history of the house in which the French Director lived, where we dined that night. I could not help recalling the sad story of Monsieur Dingler, the great French Director, who first attempted canal construction on the Isthmus. In this house had died his wife, daughter and son-in-law, and scores of other French engineers of prominence. The French butler who waited on us at dinner that evening and presided over the servants who attended us, remained with the Americans in the same capacity during the whole period of construction on the Isthmus, and is still there as the majordomo of the Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission.