8. Ripliancum: Waters that “Exceeds All.” Nusbaum’s Sea North, or Ripliancum, now called Lake Ontario, was first called Lac de St. Louis in 1632, and changed in 1660 to Lacus Ontarius—an Iroquois term meaning “Beautiful Lake.” Lake Ontario is the 14th largest lake in the world, but the smallest of the Great Lakes in surface area. Yet, the Jaredite Sea North, Ripliancum, is described as waters that exceed all (Ether 15:8).
9. In addition, his Ripliancum lies 243 feet above sea level, but 325 feet below Lake Erie. Thus it would not be possible to sail into his West Sea (Lake Erie) via its only outlet to the sea (Atlantic Ocean) because a ship could not get past the 325 foot “climb” up the falls (see #10 below).
Lake Ontarior (Nasbaum’s North Sea) is the smallest of the Great Lakes. How does the smallest lake qualify as the waters of Ripliancum “to exceed all”?9. “Large, or to exceed all.” His Ripliancum (Lake Ontario) has 7,340 square miles of water surface, while his West Sea (Lake Erie) has 10,000 square miles of surface area. Ontario is 190 by 50 miles, while Erie is 241 by 57 miles. Ontario’s shoreline is less than 700 miles while Erie’s shoreline is nearly 900 miles—thus, his West Sea is much larger than the his Sea North, yet the Jaredites named it Ripliancum. This hardly gives credence to the Jaredite term “Ripliancum,” and should disqualify Lake Ontario as the Sea North of the Land Northward.
10. His Land Northward. The distance between the two lakes is 35 miles. Somewhere along this 35 mile stretch Nasbaum has his narrow neck of land separating the Niagara River from the ancient Tonawanda Lake, created as part of the ancient watershed east of the river (which is also his South Sea and extends southward along the east shore to include the East Sea). This causes the Land Northward to be extremely narrow with a much greater width, but still only an area of about 10 miles north to south, extending to about 20 miles further east, and about forty miles wide from west to east. Mormon describes the south to north distance of the land Northward by writing; “And it [Land of Bountiful] bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed” (Alma 22:30). This hardly describes a land that is only about 10 to 12 miles from south to north on his map, beyond the area of the narrow neck.
Nusbaum’s Land of Promise within western New York. See how tiny this area is by comparison with the eastern U.S.At a most liberal figure, Nasbaum’s Land Northward would provide about 800 square miles—a very small area to house upwards of 12 to 15 million people as recorded in the scriptural record. As a comparison, the Wasatch front, at 192 miles long from Santaquin to Ogden and 5 miles wide is 965 square miles, about 20% larger than his Land Northward, and presently contains 80% of the state’s population at just over two million people (Both Salt Lake County and Utah County are 2000 square miles each).
11. The falls along the Niagara River were always an obstacle to navigation into the upper lakes until the Trent-Severn Waterway, along with the Welland and Erie Canals were built to allow ships to pass around this bottleneck. The only outlet from Lake Erie was through Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. However, the St. Lawrence River was also blocked to navigation of any kind northeast of Montreal until the system of canals and locks, known as the Saint Lawrence Seaway were finished in 1959. That is, no vessel of any kind coming off the Atlantic Ocean could have reached Lake Erie (Nasbaum’s West Sea) because of two blockages—one at the Lachine Rapids on the St. Lawrence and the other at the Niagara Falls on the Niagara River. Yet, the area of First Inheritance was along the west shore of the West Sea (Alma 22:28).
(See the next post, “The H38 Map of the Land of Promise – Part III,” for the rest of these points of inconsistency, and also to understand the fallacy of his Lake Tonawanda)
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