"Quite often, the people who do leave their own nation and come to an unknown destination, like the United States, are inherently adventurous, so we've had that adventurous spirit that has embedded itself collectively in the American consciousness."

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Where is the "unexplored land" but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is "unexplored land," to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.

— Henry David Thoreau