ARAGUAY, an affluent of the Tocantins, in Brazil, which it joins after a course of 1000 m., augmented by subsidiary streams.

ARAKAN (671), a strip of land in British Burmah, on the E. of the Bay of Bengal, 400 m. long and from 90 to 15 m. broad, a low, marshy country; produces and exports large quantities of rice, as well as sugar and hemp.  The natives belong to the Burman stock, and are of the Buddhist faith, though there is a sprinkling of Mohammedans among them.

ARAL, THE SEA OF, a lake in Turkestan, 265 m. long and 145 broad, larger than the Irish Sea, 150 m.  E. of the Caspian; has no outlet, shallow, and is said to be drying up.

ARAM, EUGENE, an English school-usher of scholarly attainments, convicted of murder years after the act and executed 1759, to whose fate a novel of Bulwer Lytton’s and a poem of Hood’s have lent a romantic and somewhat fictitious interest.

ARAMAEA, the territories lying to NE. of Palestine, the inhabitants of which spoke a Semitic dialect called Aramaic, and improperly Chaldee.

ARAMA`IC, the language of Palestine in the days of Christ, a Semitic dialect that has now almost entirely died out.

ARAMAE`ANS, a generic name given to the Semitic tribes that dwelt in the NE. of Palestine, also to those that dwelt at the mouths of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

ARAN, VAL D’, a Pyrenean valley, source of the Garonne, and one of the highest of the Pyrenees.

ARAN ISLANDS, three islands with antique relics across the mouth of Galway Bay, to which they form a breakwater.

ARANDA, COUNT OF, an eminent Spanish statesman, banished the Jesuits, suppressed brigandage, and curtailed the power of the Inquisition, was Prime Minister of Charles IV., and was succeeded by Godoy (1719-1798).

ARANJU`EZ (8), a town 28 m.  SE. of Madrid, long the spring resort of the Spanish Court.

AR`ANY, JANOS, a popular Hungarian poet of peasant origin, attained to eminence as a man of letters (1819-1882).

AR`ARAT, a mountain in Armenia on which Noah’s ark is said to have rested, 17,000 ft. high, is within Russian territory, and borders on both Turkey and Persia.

ARA`TUS, native of Sicyon, in Greece, promoter of the Achaean League, in which he was thwarted by Philip of Macedon, was poisoned, it is said, by his order (271-213 B.C.); also a Greek poet, author of two didactic poems, born in Cilicia, quoted by St Paul in Acts xvii. 28.

ARAUCA`NIA (88), the country of the Araucos, in Chile, S. of Concepcion and N. of Valdivia, the Araucos being an Indian race long resistant but now subject to Chilian authority, and interesting as the only one that has proved itself able to govern itself and hold its own in the presence of the white man.

ARAUCA`RIA, tall conifer trees, natives of and confined to the southern hemisphere.

ARBE`LA, a town near Mosul, where Alexander the Great finally defeated Darius, 331 B.C.