High among the snow-tipped ranges of Afghanistan, there is a peak notable for its peculiar rocky crown. Unlike its lordly neighbors, it is dominated not by crags and glaciers, but by a projection which seems almost to bear the impress of human hands. From the southern valley, five thousand feet beneath, the traveler will observe a gigantic steel-gray figure carved in the image of a woman; and he will notice that the woman's hands are uplifted in an attitude of prayer, and that she stands with one foot slanted behind her and one foot slightly upraised, as though prepared to step into the abyss. How this lifelike form came to be perched on that desolate eminence is a mystery to the observer; b…
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