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.
ATTRIBUTION:
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Letter, May 20, 1860, to Harrison Blake, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6, p. 362, Houghton Mifflin (1906).
