James Maury Quotes

Large parties will never answer the purpose. They will alarm the Indian nations they pass through. Three of four young men well qualified for the task might perhaps compleat your wishes at a very trifling expense.

Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, 1793

The expedition of Messrs. Lewis & Clarke for exploring the river Missouri, & the best communication from that to the Pacific ocean, has had all the success which could have been expected.

I've always been interested in exploration and the history of exploring the world, but it seems like we've found everything now.

The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight. These men were very kind.

I had the Big Horn river explored from Wind River mountain to my place of embarkation.

Find the shortest & most convenient route of communications between the U. S. & the Pacific Ocean.

The President [Thomas Jefferson] has been all his life a man of letters, very speculative and a lover of glory, and it would be possible he might attempt to perpetuate the fame of his administration … by discovering … the way by which Americans may some day extend their population and their influence up to the Pacific Ocean

Gentlemen: The Lands of the Missouri River and the Indians inhabiting them are not as well known as they should be….

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it.

Mapping, both literal and metaphorical, has always been about our quest for knowing.

The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark.

Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.

I would stare at maps of Delaware for hours.

The object of all the former voyages to the South Seas undertaken by the command of his present majesty, has been the advancement of science and the increase of knowledge.

I think the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the greatest undertaking in American History. I think landing a man on the moon pales next to it.

Who put their foot in the Missouri River first: Lewis or Clark? Who cares!

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.

What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.

And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.

There was a time when a man was so convinced that the world was round that he was determined to prove it.

We were also fortunate enough to engage in our service a Canadian Frenchmen, who had been with the Chayenne Indians on the Black mountains, and last summer descended thence by the Little Missouri.

Sir, our natural boundary is the Pacific Ocean. The swelling tide of our population must and will roll on until that mighty ocean interposes its waters, and limits our territorial empire.

Turn your face to the West and there build your homes and fortunes.

Soon you’ll be whirled along by steam in a country now only inhabited by wild beasts and Indians