The Gatun dam has aroused more adverse criticism than any other canal feature. Most startling statements have been made concerning it. Its history is worthy of notice. The first study of the Panama route under United States authority was made by an Isthmian Canal Commission of which Admiral Walker was chairman and Generals Hains and Ernst and Mr. Noble were members. With respect to the location of locks, the report of this commission said: “No location suitable for a dam exists in the Chagres River below Bohio”. Hains and Ernst signed this report. In a paper read before the American Society of Civil Engineers on March 5, 1902, Mr. George S. Morison, a very distinguished American engineer, said: “All engineers who have examined the route of the Panama Canal agree that the neighborhood of Bohio is the only available location for a dam by which the summit level must be maintained”. Under authority of the President, by executive order dated June 24, 1905, a board of consulting engineers was appointed to consider the various plans proposed for the construction of a canal across the Isthmus. The minority of the board, as has been stated before, recommended a lock canal with a dam at Gatun. The majority of the board, 8 to 5, opposed the idea of a dam and locks at Gatun on two grounds: first, that the introduction of locks in a treatment of the question was objectionable from many points of view; and, second, that the maintenance of a summit by means of an earth dam of immense magnitude to control the flood waters of this river introduced an element of great danger since the dam, without sheet piling, was proposed to be founded on the alluvial-filled gorges of the Chagres River, where the depth at one point extended 258 feet below the level of the sea. Of the minority above mentioned one member, Mr. Noble, was a member of the former Commission who had reported that Bohio was the lowest point on the Chagres where a dam was practicable. The report was reviewed by the Isthmian Canal Commission which included among its members Major Harrod and Generals Hains and Ernst. They all indorsed the minority report, notwithstanding the fact that in March, 1905, Major Harrod was opposed to any lock plan, and that his two associates had said in 1901 that no proper site for a dam existed below Bohio. It is true that every consideration of the Panama Canal type by any unauthorized body rejected the idea of a dam at Gatun, and its indorsement is confined to a minority of the board of consulting engineers and to three members of the canal commission who had previously either been in favor of a sea-level canal or who had said, in effect, that Gatun was not a proper site for the dam.