The committee met at New York May 17, 1816, and organized. The proposed line of the canal was divided into three sections and an engineer was appointed for each. The Western Section embraced the portion of the route between Lake Erie and the Seneca River; the Middle Section was that between the Seneca River and Rome on the Mohawk; the Eastern Section extended from Rome to Albany on the Hudson. The only point at which there was serious question as to the best route of the canal was between Lake Erie and the Genesee country; and the question was whether to pass south or north of the "mountain ridge" which lay south of the shore of Lake Ontario. Four engineers were sent to make an examination. Two commissioners and engineers were sent to inspect the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts, "the best artificial navigation in the United States." The commissioners met again July 15, after which three of them went to inspect the important portions of a canal route which was now being marked out by the corps of surveyors from Lake Erie to the Mohawk. The size of the canal proposed was forty feet wide on water surface, twenty-eight feet wide at the base and four feet deep--capable of handling boats of one hundred tons. The locks were to be ninety feet long, twelve feet in width in the clear. These would accommodate any lumber that was then being shipped from the regions tapped by the canal. The route of the canal survey was being marked by "bench marks, level pegs, and other fixtures; ... Shafts have been sunk into the earth in various places, to ascertain its nature, with a view to a just estimation of the labour required, and of the expense to be incurred." The point of junction with Lake Erie, forever a doubtful point until the very last, was now planned at the mouth of Buffalo Creek; the water was higher there, of course, than at any point in the Niagara River, "and every inch gained in elevation will produce a large saving in the expense of excavation throughout the Lake Erie level." [Illustration: MAP AND PROFILE OF THE ERIE CANAL [_From Poussin's "Travaux d'améliorations intérieures ... des États-Unis d'Amérique de 1824 à 1831"_ (Paris, 1834)]]