West of Cumorah the country is more open than on the south or east. The hills common to the country are fewer and the plain more expansive. Though the country south and east is broken, and the numerous hills higher than on the west, yet such is the commanding height of Cumorah that the view is unobstructed for many miles. Northward some miles the hills are most thickly clustered; between them and Cumorah is located the town of Palmyra, and beyond that, at the foot of the thickly clustered hills referred to, runs what is now called Canagrie creek, really one of the tributaries of the Clyde river, into which it empties at no great distance.
Such is the hill "Cumorah" and its surroundings; the hill "Ramah" of the Jaredites; "Mormon Hill," or "Mormon Bible Hill," as it is called by the people about Palmyra. "On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates of the Book of Mormon, deposited in a stone box."[[16]]
Footnotes
[1]. History of the Prophet Joseph, by Lucy Smith, chapters 21, 23.
[2]. History of the Church, vol. I, p. 47.
[3]. History of the Church, vol. I, p. 84.
[4]. Evening and Morning Star for April, 1833, p. 167.
[5]. The fact that on the title page of the first edition, Joseph Smith is called the "Author and Proprietor," is considered in Part IV of this work.
[6]. See New Witnesses for God, vol. I, chapters 10 and 11, for a full account of this revelation. See also Wentworth letter, History of the Church, vol. IV, ch. 31.
[7]. America.