280 SITUATION OF KEDABEG. 



winter when the steppes are covered with snow, the 

 shepherds drive their herds up the mountains to let 

 them browse on the young shoots. For this pur- 

 pose they simply fell the trees, and let the cattle 

 eat the buds and twigs. In this manner a single herd 

 often annihilates square versts of luxuriant forest. The 

 managers of our foundry have accordingly always 

 experienced the greatest difficulty in preventing these 

 devastating herds from destroying our woods, on the 

 preservation of which smelting is wholly dependent in 

 the absence of coal or other combustible material. 



The smelting -works stand by a small mountain 

 brook, which below Kedabeg forces its way abruptly 

 through the ridge separating Kedabeg from the para- 

 disiacally beautiful Shamkhor valley. In the valley 

 where it emerges lie the ruins of a small Armenian 

 fortress, whilst the Shamkhor valley at about the level 

 of Kedabeg conceals an old Armenian monastery, which 

 was then still inhabited by a few monks. At present 

 the aspect of Kedabeg, seen by anyone ascending from 

 the valley, after crossing the last mountain slope and 

 passing an old cemetery on the way, is most surprising. 

 It is the throughly European spectacle of a small pic- 

 turesquely situated manufacturing town, which presents 

 itself to view, with huge furnaces and large buildings, 

 among them a Christian chapel, a school, and an inn 

 fitted up in European fashion. There is also a rail- 

 way carried over a lofty viaduct, connecting the branch 

 smelting establishment of Kalakent, some twenty miles 

 off, with Kedabeg and the neighbouring metalliferous 



