NEW MEXICO ERECTED BY CONGRESS INTO A TERRITORY. 353 



opened commerce of the Prairies and finally established the annual 

 caravans which within recent years have departed from the neigh- 

 borhood of Independence, laden with most valuable freights for 

 the markets of Santa Fe, 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 con- 

 voys 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, consti- 

 tuted the only government protection until the year 1843, when large 

 escorts under Caplain 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 pro- 

 vided : "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 Territory of New Mexico : 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 



