In the two and a half millennia since, Nephi recorded Jacob's words the Nephite Island has changed beyond recognition. But there are surprises in store for those who will look closely at a map of South America. Look with the, thought of an island in your .mind's. eye. Notice the relatively small area occupied by the Andes mountain range. Might that range have constituted our Nephite Island? Let us suppose that the Amazon basin was then a fresh-water sea and that what is now Argentina was completely inundated. Given this supposition; our evasive "isle of the sea" emerges.

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To satisfy the requirements of the "isle of the sea" the Andean coastline of our original supposition must have extended much further south even than the vast Amazon basin. What is the evidence or a sea in that area, the Nephites' East Sea south?

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The evidence so far presented is shown in map form on page 17, the western island there being the Nephite/Lamanite one of Book of Mormon times. The distance from the Plata estuary to the continental divide is over one thousand, miles. This great bay or gulf would have formed the Nephite East Sea south which, with the East Sea of the Amazon basin, separated the. west island from the east island.

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The conclusion is that Jacob knew whereof he spoke when he referred to the Nephite "isle of the sea." The evidence presented in the present chapter indicates within reasonably close limits the coastline of that island, as shown in the accompanying map. Having arrived at this basic definition of the territory involved, we can now proceed to locate on the map some of the geographical features ref erred to in the Book of Mormon.

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The Jaredite Landing

Book of Mormon passages such as Ether 9:31-33 and 10:20-21 indicate that the Jaredite nation occupied "the land northward," that land "which was northward of the land Bountiful" (Alma 50:11). This was the land at and northward of the narrow neck of land, which the previous chapter identifies with the Gulf of Guayaquil on the west and the Andean coastline of the former East Sea on the east. The reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that the Jaredite landing took place on the coast of today's Ecuador, north of Guayaquil.

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Inca Roads

The Inca roads span a distance of over two thousand miles, from the northern borders of Ecuador to central Chile. They were my chief guide to the widely separated lands and cities of the Nephites.