Additional Clues to the Land of Promise Location-Part II Many Waters

Besides the Land of Promise location matching scriptural clues such as winds and currents moving Nephi’s ship that was “driven forth before the wind,” the temperature and climate needed to grow seeds from Jerusalem exceedingly and provide an abundant climate, locating ore deposits in abundance and contain gold, silver and copper in a single unit, finding two unknown animals that were as “useful to man” as the elephant, and two unknown grains on a par with corn, wheat and barley, and natural herbs to cure deadly fever, there are other clues in the scriptural record that also needs to be found in the Land of Promise.

One of these would be the area referred to as “the land of many waters.”

King Limhi, when describing the experiences of a 43-man expedition he sent out to find Zarahemla, describes this land as “they were lost in the wilderness for the space of many days, yet they were diligent and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel” (Mosiah 8:8).

Mormon goes further, in adding information about this land of many waters when he wrote: “We did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites” (Mormon 6:4).

Obviously, then, in the Land Northward, beyond the Hill Cumorah, there was a land containing many waters—lakes, rivers, and fountains. These waters were so significant that they were mentioned twice in connection to this land northward—evidently a far different topography than that of the Land Southward. These many waters would probably have been several lakes and rivers that flowed to the sea—but more importantly, these waters contained “fountains.”

Now a fountain in connection with bodies of water and rivers is generally considered to be the origination of those waters and streams, “a point of origin or dissemination; a principal source” of a body of water, river or stream—referred to as the source, fount, wellspring, wellhead, beginning, rise, cause, genesis, commencement derivation, fountainhead.

Thus, this area of many waters would be the source of water in the land, not a lake, which has an inlet and then an outlet, but the source or origination of that water. In this sense, the Great Lakes of the Northeastern United States would not qualify as a source of a river other than as a pass through—that is, waters pour into the Great lakes from the north from the Canadian watershed, and then passes through the lakes and becomes the rivers and streams of the Eastern United States watershed.

This means the Land of Promise, there should be an area of considerable size that is the beginning of rivers and lakes, from which rivers and streams flow outward and obviously downward.
In Ecuador, such an area exists, where numerous individual waterways, lakes, rivers, and streams have their origin. Numerous rivers begin here, each flowing southward into the Bay of Guauaquil and into the Pacific Ocean—the Pablo, Caracol, Babahoyo, Daule and the Guayas, which is the most important river in South America that does not flow into the Atlantic Ocean. The Guayas is the largest watershed in South America west of the Andes and has an area of almost 22,000 square miles, covering nine provinces, and discharges 18 million cubic miles of water into the Bay of Guayaquil every year.

Truly, a land of many waters as Mormon described.