[Arad] (42), a fortified town in Hungary, seat of a bishop, on the right bank of the Maros; manufactures tobacco, trades in cattle and corn.
[Araf], the Mohammedan sheol or borderland between heaven and hell for those who are from incapacity either not morally bad or morally good.
[Arafat`], a granite hill E. of Mecca, a place of pilgrimage as the spot where Adam received his wife after 200 years separation from her on account of their disobedience to the Lord in deference to the suggestion of Satan.
[Ar`ago, François], an eminent physicist and astronomer, born in the S. of France, entered the Polytechnic School of Paris when seventeen, elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at the early age of twenty-three, nominated Director of the Observatory in 1830, was member of the Provisional Government in 1848, refused to take the oath to Louis Napoleon after the coup d'état, would rather resign his post at the Observatory, but was retained, and at his death received a public funeral (1786-1853).
[Arago, Jacques], a brother of the preceding, a littérateur and a traveller, author of a "Voyage Round the World" (1790-1855).
[Ar`agon] (925), a territory in the NE. of Spain, traversed by the Ebro, and divided as you proceed southward into the provinces of Huesca, Saragossa, and Teruel, mountainous in the N.; with beautiful fertile valleys, rather barren, in the S; was a kingdom till 1469.
[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.