There were a number of committees in Congress which dealt with canal legislation. Principal among these were the Committees on Appropriations of the two Houses, the Committee on Interoceanic Canals of the Senate, and the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the House. The Appropriations Committees dealt with the question of appropriations. The House Appropriations Committee usually made a trip to the Isthmus before each session of Congress. There it would hold hearings, questioning closely every person connected with the work who had made estimates for its benefit, its members seeing with their own eyes the projects for which each individual appropriation was asked. The practice was, during these visits, to go over a part of the work and then to hold sessions of the committee for the purpose of asking questions about that phase of the undertaking. The testimony was taken down by an official stenographer and printed for the use of every Member of Congress. A few months later the chairman and chief engineer would make a trip to Washington and furnish the committee with such supplementary information as the intervening time might have disclosed. The Senate Committee did not visit the Isthmus as frequently, as it usually found that the hearings held by the House Committee afforded it sufficient information on which to predicate its action. All matters having to do with organization traffic, or general laws for the Canal Zone, were handled by the Committee on Interoceanic Canals of the Senate and the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the House. It was the latter committee, under the chairmanship of Representative William C. Adamson, of Georgia, which framed the permanent Canal Law, under which the Isthmian waterway will be governed and operated. The big fight in Congress over the type of canal was waged before the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals. The records of this committee, together with the additional records in the hands of Congress, constitute one of the most extensive accounts of a great work anywhere to be found. The official literature of the Panama Canal is almost as voluminous as the canal is big. Although Congress usually left the details of canal construction to be worked out by the Canal Commission and the President, from start to finish it showed a determination so to deal with the big project that it could look back over the work with the feeling that it had contributed its share to the triumph of the undertaking. CHAPTER XXIII SEA-LEVEL CANAL IMPOSSIBLE