The Finger Lakes Are Not Mormon's Fountains

According to many Great Lakes Theorists, the Finger Lakes in upper New York State are the Sea East in the Land of Promise of the Book of Mormon. In fact, they use two concepts for the Sea East, one is Lake Ontario, the smallest of the five great lakes, and the finger lakes, which are to the south in what is now New York state.
As with all proposals of Great Lake Theorists, they are forced to improvise in identifying the named seas of Book of Mormon lands. Many claim the northern portion of Lake Erie is the west sea, and the western portion of Lake Ontario is the sea west, while the eastern part of this same lake is the sea east. Lake Cayuga of the Finger Lakes is the east sea. The sea south is the southern portion of Lake Erie. For the greater land northward, Lake Huron serves as the sea west with its northernmost extremity (Georgian Bay) serving as the sea north. A critical point in this confusing cascade of "seas" is one's point of reference, whether it be in the land northward or southward.
As one Great Lakes Theorist claims, “Yet, those trying to reconcile this area with the geographical descriptions provided in the Book of Mormon will find various clues interspersed throughout the text. For example, they inform us that the Hill Ramah/Cumorah lay just to the south of Ripliancum, which the Jaredites claim means “large” or “to exceed all,” which can only mean Lake Ontario.”

Why this can only mean Lake Ontario is unclear, since it is not at the northern extremity of their Land Northward as it is in the scriptures. However, since they are forced to have the Hill Cumorah where it is located in New York, any body of water to the north of this hill has to be their Sea North, or Ripliancum. On the other hand, Vern Holly’s celebrated map of the Land of Promise in the Great Lakes region shows the Hill Cumorah in the Land Southward with Lake Ontario to the north of it as the Sea East.
Another quote is, “Moreover, the Prophet Ether informs us that their final battles took them eastward toward the Hill Ramah. Thus we can place at least one of their kingdoms in western New York. Further, both the Nephites and Jaredites described the territory around the Hill Ramah/Cumorah as being a land of many waters; a description which fits the lands around the Hill Cumorah perfectly, for the entire region is simply filled with water, including literally thousands of streams, creeks, ponds, and eleven finger lakes which extend from north to south across the land like great fingers of water ranging in length from three miles to forty.”

Two points should be made here. First, the final battle around the Hill Cumorah is in Holly’s Land Southward, south of the Sea East, not in the Land Northward, near the northern extremity of the Sea North or Ripliancum as the scriptures state. And second, the Land of Many Waters in the Book of Mormon is described by Mormon as, “We did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tent around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains” (Mormon 6:4). Theorists are fond of quoting only a portion of this scripture, which describes a land of many waters, which, literally, could be placed almost anywhere that lakes exist. But what they do not consider, and seldom even quote, is the fact that in this land of many waters were not only rivers, but fountains. In Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, a fountain is described as: “a source of water, a spring or issuing of water from the earth, a natural spring of water issuing from the interior of the earth, the head or source of a river, the source.”
Lakes, of course, are rarely fountains. That is, lakes are formed as part of a drainage area of rivers and streams that enter into them. In the case of the Great Lakes, their largest single source of water supply is precipitation, amounting to an average annual depth of 27 to 33 inches on the surface of the five lakes. The second largest supply is from the streams, which drain the adjacent land. While no great rivers empty into the Great Lakes, the entrance of water is carried by thousands of drainage streams and small rivers.

And, most importantly, the drainage of the Great Lakes, which themselves are not fountains (original water sources), is what creates the Finger Lakes and the other drainage streams and rivers to the south in what is the Theorists Land of Many Waters. Thus, not a single fountain among them. Evidently, what Mormon had in mind when he used the word “fountain,” is the source of the many waters about him, or about the Hill Cumorah—a very clear description that does not match the Finger Lakes area, nor does it match the Great Lakes region at all.