Or consider what our great grandfathers thought about the mountains, which we now consider so scenic. 4 They were 'monstrous excrescences of nature'. 5 God originally made the world a smooth sphere happily habitable for the original humans; but, alas, humans sinned, and the earth was warped in punishment. Thomas Burnet is repelled by these 'ruines of a broken World', 'wild, vast and indigested heaps of Stones and Earth' that resulted when 'con- fusion came into Nature'. 6 John Donne called them 'warts, and pock-holes in the face of th'earth'. 7 Now we know better. After geology, we are more likely to approach mountains, as.
