It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people that the people who made up the phrase "people are people everywhere" had traditionally thought of as people.
"Many of them wouldn't know a pick-axe if you hit them with it."
It was mostly unexplored too. At least by proper explorers. Just living there didn't count.
He wasn't strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime. ("Did you see who carved out this valley? Would you recognise that glacier if you saw it again?")
"The Ancient Greeks wrote in legend of a terrible container in which all the evils of the world were trapped. How prophetic they were. All they got wrong was the name. They called it 'Pandora's Box', when, of course, they meant 'Baldrick's Trousers'" ...