It was only in the eighteenth century that people in Europe began to thing that mountains are beautiful. Before that time, they were feared by the inhabitants of the plains, and especially by the townsmen, to whom they were wild, dangerous places in which one would  be lost or killed by terrible animals. Townsmen saw in their cities, the victory of Man over Nature, of civilization, peace and beauty over what was wild, disorderly and ugly. Slowly, however, many of the people who were living comfortably in towns began to grow tired of them. Man has many instincts in his chest, some of which fight against others : one of these instincts is to explore the unknown, not to be satisfied with a life in which everything is orderly, peaceful and easily understood, but to look for mystery, for things which the reason cannot explain, for sights and sounds which produce in one a thrill of fear. So, in the eighteenth century, people began to turn away from the man-made town to the untouched country and particularly, to places where it was dangerous, rough and disorderly. Wild rocks and high mountains, and the Lake District in North-West England, with its mountains and lakes, became a popular place for a holiday. Then mountain-climbing began to grow popular as a sport. To some people, there is something enormously attractive about setting out to conquer a mountain : a struggle against Nature is finer than a battle against other human begins. And then, when you are at the top of a giant mountain after a long and difficult climb, what a satisfactory reward it is to be able to look down over everything within sight! At such times, you feel nobler and purer than you can ever feel down below.