In time this commercial prosperity, which enriched Spain, called the attention of her rulers and others to the possibility of constructing an interoceanic ship-canal. Tradition says that Charles V ordered a survey in 1520 to determine the feasibility of a canal, but that the governor reported such an undertaking absolutely impossible for any monarch. From that time the prosperity of Panama increased rapidly. Lines of trade were established with the west coast of South America and the Pacific ports of Central America. Its glory came to a sudden end when, on the sixth of February, 1671, it was sacked and burned by Morgan’s buccaneers. A new city, the present Panama, was founded in 1673, but the old one was never rebuilt. The project of a canal on this route, because of its romantic and commercial interest, was kept alive for more than three centuries without definite action being taken. Finally, in 1876, a French Company was organized at Paris to make surveys preparatory to building a ship canal across the Isthmus. Lieutenant L. N. E. Wyse, a French naval officer, had immediate charge of the work. He obtained a concession, known as the Wyse Concession, from Colombia giving France the necessary rights for the construction of a canal. In May, 1879, an international congress was convened in Paris under the auspices of Ferdinand de Lesseps, to consider the question of the best location and plan for the canal. This congress, after a two weeks session, decided in favor of a sea-level canal without locks to be located on the Panama route. Immediately after this action the Panama Canal Company was organized under the general laws of France with Ferdinand de Lesseps as its president. The Wyse concession was purchased by the company, and after two attempts the stock was successfully floated in December, 1880. Two years were then devoted to surveys and preliminary work. In the plan first adopted the canal was to be 29.5 feet deep and 72 feet wide at the bottom. Leaving Colon, the canal passed through low ground to the valley of the Chagres river at Gatun; thence through the valley to Obispo where it left the river and crossed the continental divide by means of a tunnel and reached the Pacific through the valley of the Rio Grande. The tides on the Pacific were to be overcome by sloping the bottom of the Pacific end of the canal. No provision was made for controlling the Chagres. Early in the eighties a tidal lock near the Pacific was added to the plan, and various schemes for the control of the Chagres were proposed, the one most favored being the construction of the dam at Gamboa. The tunnel idea was soon abandoned.