Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/425

Rh opened commerce of the Prairies and finally established the annual caravans which within recent years have departed from the neighborhood of Independence, laden with most valuable freights for the markets of Santa Fé, Chihuahua, and even the distant Fair of San Juan de los Lagos.

In time, however, the caravans, the period of their passage, and their value, became known to the savages through whose lonely territory they passed, and so many cruel attacks were made, that the United States resolved to protect them and established military convoys for the most dangerous part of the route. But these were not always of sufficient size, nor did they cover the road adequately; for the escort which accompanied the caravan of 1829, and another composed of sixty dragoons under Captain Wharton in 1834, constituted the only government protection until the year 1843, when large escorts under Captain Cook attended two different caravans as far as the Arkansas river. Since that period, the war has slightly interfered with the trade; but the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, having given New Mexico to the United States, and a territorial government having been formed for it during the first session of the thirty-first Congress, a new and progressive era is about to dawn upon the whole of the hitherto lonely waste between the western settlements of Texas and the shores of the Pacific.

By an act approved on the 9th of September, 1850, it is provided "That all that portion of the territory of the United States bounded as follows: beginning at a point in the Colorado river, where the boundary line with the Republic of Mexico crosses the same; thence eastwardly with the said boundary line to the Rio Grande; thence following the main channel of said river to the parallel of the thirty-second degree of north latitude; thence east with said degree to its intersection with the one hundred and third degree of longitude west of Greenwich; thence north with said degree of longitude to the parallel of the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude; thence west with said parallel to the summit of the Sierra Madre; thence south with the crest of said mountains to the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude; thence west with said parallel to its intersection with the boundary line of the State of California; thence with said boundary line to the place of beginning,—be and the same is hereby erected into a temporary government, by the name of the : Provided, That nothing in this act contained shall be construed to inhibit the Government of the United States from dividing said Territory into two or more Territories, in such manner and at such times as Congress shall