The Mexican Commissioner filed a separate opinion dissenting from that part of Mr. Lafleur's opinion relating to the fixed line and the retroactivity and applicability of the treaty of 1884. Overruled on these points, Mr. Puga felt himself justified in joining with the Presiding Commissioner in construing the treaty of 1884 and therefore united in the award dividing the Chamizal tract between the two countries along the line of the river bed as it existed before the flood of 1864. I filed an opinion dissenting from that portion of the Presiding Commissioner's opinion construing the treaty of 1884. I held the Commission was not empowered by the two governments to divide the Chamizal tract but was called upon to render a clean-cut decision in favor of one or the other government. I recorded my conviction that it would be "as impossible to locate the channel of the Rio Grande in the Chamizal tract in 1864 as to re-locate the Garden of Eden or the lost continent of Atlantis." And finally I pointed out, as I had in 1896, the impossible situation which would arise if any attempt were made to apply the principles of the majority opinion in other cases, concluding as follows: "The American Commissioner does not believe that it is given to human understanding to measure for any practical use when erosion ceases to be slow and gradual and becomes sudden and violent, but if this difficulty could be surmounted, the practical application of the interpretation could not be viewed in any other light than as calamitous to both nations. Because, as is manifest from the record in this case, all the land on both sides of the river from the Bosque de Cordoba, which adjoins the Chamizal tract, to the Gulf of Mexico (excepting the canyon region), has been traversed by the river since 1852 in its unending lateral movement, and the mass, if not all of that land, is the product of similar erosion to that which occurred at El Chamizal, and by the new interpretation which is now placed upon the Convention of 1884 by the majority of this Commission, not only is the entire boundary thrown into well-nigh inextricable confusion, but the very treaty itself is subjected to an interpretation that makes its application impossible in practice in all cases where an erosive movement is in question. "The Convention of 1910 sets forth that the United States and Mexico, 'desiring to terminate * * * the differences which have arisen between the two countries,' have determined to refer these differences to this Commission enlarged for this purpose. The present decision terminates nothing; settles nothing. It is simply an invitation for international litigation. It breathes the spirit of unconscious but nevertheless unauthorized compromise rather than of judicial determination."