"The Alarodians of Herodotus, joined with the Sapeires … are almost certainly the inhabitants of Armenia, whose Semitic name was Urarda, or Ararat. 'Alarud,' indeed, is a mere variant form of 'Ararud,' the l and r being undistinguishable in the old Persian, and 'Ararud' serves determinately to connect the Ararat of Scripture with the Urarda, or Urartha of the Inscriptions. … The name of Ararat is constantly used in Scripture, but always to denote a country rather than a particular mountain. … The connexion … of Urarda with the Babylonian tribe of Akkad is proved by the application in the inscriptions of the ethnic title of Burbur (?) to the Armenian king … ; but there is nothing to prove whether the Burbur or Akkad of Babylonia descended in a very remote age from the mountains to colonize the plains, or whether the Urardians were refugees of a later period driven northward by the growing power of the Semites. The former supposition, however, is most in conformity with Scripture, and incidentally with the tenor of the inscriptions." _H. C. Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, book 7, appendix 3._ "The broad and rich valley of the Kur, which corresponds closely with the modern Russian province of Georgia, was [anciently] in the possession of a people called by Herodotus Saspeires or Sapeires, whom we may identify with the Iberians of later writers. Adjoining upon them towards the south, probably in the country about Erivan, and so in the neighbourhood of Ararat, were the Alarodians, whose name must be connected with that of the great mountain. On the other side of the Sapeirian country, in the tracts now known as Mingrelia and Imeritia, regions of a wonderful beauty and fertility, were the Colchians,—dependents, but not exactly subjects, of Persia." _G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies: Persia, chapter 1._ ALASKA: A. D. 1867. Purchase by the United States.