Mosiah 21:22-32 (about 121 B.C.)

The people of Nephi, serving under Limhi their Nephite king, were in bondage to the Lamanites and paying “one half of all they possessed” as tribute to the Lamanite king (Mosiah 19:15). During this trying time, king Limhi secretly sent a “small number of men” northwards, “to search for the land of Zarahemla,” and also to obtain help for freeing his people from bondage.

The exact route of the search party, and the number of days of their journey, is unknown, but there are several key elements in the record to help determine where they may have traveled. The search party, who were all the third generation from the time Zeniff’s group first arrived in the land of Nephi from the land of Zarahemla, obviously did not know from first-hand experience where the land of Zarahemla was precisely located, and they possibly did not even know which side of the watershed divide the land of Zarahemla was situated, nor where to cross the divide. But they would have known that the land of Zarahemla was north of the land of Nephi. They also knew that the area of the original western coastal route used to travel south to the land of Nephi was populated by Lamanites.

To protect their secret expedition, we can assume they were trying to avoid any contact with the Lamanites. We suspect they wanted to move quickly by avoiding the central highlands and the difficulties in traveling through the more rugged parts of the wilderness. This would then leave the eastern side of the narrow strip of wilderness as an easier and safer travel route. The search party’s plan appears, therefore, to focus on merely traveling northward along an east coast route until they found the land of Zarahemla, “but they could not find it, and they were lost in the wilderness” (Mosiah 21:25).

After traveling through the eastern side of the narrow strip of wilderness (the eastern coast of central Baja California), the search party continued northward until they found numerous bones within the desolate land of a destroyed civilization—the Jaredite people. The Jaredites most likely would have perished within some 100 years or so of the search party’s arrival, because bones and other evidence, such as breastplates and swords of a destroyed people were still recognizable (Mosiah 8:10-11; 21:26). It is important to note that the hill Cumorah (same hill as the hill Ramah where the last battle of the Jaredites took place) is described as being located on the eastern side of the land near the seashore, again suggesting the search party’s route followed the eastern side of the peninsula along the seashore (Ether 9:3; 15:11).

The search party mistakenly assumed that the remains they found of a destroyed civilization were associated with the people of Zarahemla—because they knew nothing of the Jaredites—and “returned to the land of Nephi, having arrived in the borders of the land not many days before the coming of Ammon” (Mosiah 21:26). The search party probably returned along the same eastern coastal route they had taken northward. During the expedition, king Limhi’s men discovered a “record of the people whose bones they had found” (Mosiah 21:27), on 24 gold plates which king Mosiah later translated and Moroni subsequently abridged into the Book of Ether, as the record of the same Jaredites that they mistakenly assumed to be the people of Zarahemla. It is noteworthy that our proposed land of Zarahemla in Baja California is on the western side of the peninsular divide and a search party, such as king Limhi’s, traveling along the eastern coast, would have completely missed the settlements in the land of Zarahemla because of the high mountain ranges of the peninsular divide located between the land of Zarahemla and any eastern coastal route. This mountainous, line-of-sight barrier is evident when traveling the same route today.