224 BEYOND THE LIMITS OF CIVILIZATION. Book II. 
prairie, where, in charge of Mexican lads, our mules had 
been out at grass. On the 17th of August, in company 
with Mr. Mayer and his wife, I followed the caravan, 
which, when we overtook it, had already passed the frontier 
of the State of Missouri, and entered the large tract which 
at that time still belonged to the Indians west of the 
United States, but is now opened to the colonization of the 
whites, under the name of the Kansas territory. 
