“And thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward” (Alma 22:32)
According to Bingley, the Bay of Guayaquil in Ecuador, just north of the border with Peru, is very extensive, and contains several islands, and an excellent harbor for the building of ships and being a center for shipping. It’s commercial use was established as early as the late 16th Century, and has been a business port ever since, with good anchorage for ships opposite to the town at the distance of about a league from the mouth of the river.
The road from Quito to Guayaquil lies partly through a boggy tract, partly along the banks of a river, and partly among mountains, rocks and precipices. Even today, the woods around are infested with “noxious” animals (Rev. William Bingley, (compilation of travelers) printed by John Sharpe, London, 1820, Travels in South America 1823, p 187-188 (Harvard College Library—a gift of Luther S. Livingston, Cambridge, Nov. 10, 1914).
The Guayas River merges into this main port, which has an island called Puná, a beautiful and colorful island about 26 miles from the current city of Guayaquil in this large bay. A strong ocean current flows into this bay, allowing easy ingress at certain times of the day, and flows outward providing excellent egress at others, allowing early galleons access to this excellent port.
Sometimes called a gulf, this bay separates the land in a very noticeable and geographic sense with the most eastern shoreline of the bay less than thirty miles from the rising of the Andes, providing a narrow pass or neck of land between the ocean and the steep, unscaleable peaks that now rise sharply thousands of feet into the air along this cordillera of recently risen mountains.
In Book of Mormon times, before the Andes were raised up (“like a cork,” according to geologists), this was the border of the East Sea, making this a narrow neck of land dividing the Land Northward from the Land Southward (Alma 50:34), “from the east to the west sea,” and being a “journey of a day and a half for a Nephite” (Alma 22:32). Within this protected harbor, “Nephite shipping and their building of ships,” occurred (Helaman 3:14), and Hagoth built his shipyards and constructed numerous ships that took some 5,400 emigrant men, including their wives and children, to a “Land which was northward” (Alma 63:4-6).
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I assume that when you talk about recent geologic times, you are referring to a ten or twelve thousand year old world. How do you justify that in light of the scientific world claiming the earth is many billions of years old?
ReplyDeleteI have traveled from the Gulf of Campeche to the Bay of Tehuantepec, which is a far greater distance than any Nephite could have walked in a day and a half; and also been on a couple of tours in where people from BYU have claimed were Nephite lands; however, when I asked them how that related to certain scriptural passages, they were stumped for an answer. Personally, I cannot see the correlation. I hope your book is more accurte and relative than their views.
ReplyDeleteJennifer: Yes. If you were to read my book, "Scientific Fallacies & Other Myths" you would see the rationale behind this concept of a young earth. When you strip away the so-called 4.55 billion year old earth concept, and rely on the more provable young earth that book points out, you will see why all this geologic time frame I use fits together so nicely.
ReplyDeleteRandy: I certainly hope my book is more accurate than those written by Mesoamerican Theorists. My work is extremely well footnoted and all claims and comments are backed up fully by experts in the field. If you don't find it so, please let me know.
ReplyDeleteThere is one problem which keeps popping up in regards to the divide of the land south and north and that is the Jaredite records in the book of Ether. It seems to indicate that there were no poisonous snakes in the land north but many in the land south and that for a time they were so abundant in the border region that travel to the land south were lethal.
ReplyDeleteTypo? Book published in 1820, but the title has ... 1823. Error?
ReplyDelete(Rev. William Bingley, (compilation of travelers) printed by John Sharpe, London, 1820, Travels in South America 1823,...
These were two different references: 1) Rev. William Bingley, Travels in South America, John Sharpe, Publisher, printed by John Sharpe, London, 1820; 2) John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, Harper & Bros, New York, 1841 (The 1823 date had to do with a gift of that book to the library source in which we first found the listing; however, today that reference is readily available most places)
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