“We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracingthe steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise andadventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.”
