Their history informs us that they, in time, occupied the continent from the Isthmus of Darien to the great lake on the north, and that the states of their vast empire occupied the shores of both the eastern and western oceans.
Moroni says, "I take mine account from the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether;" Ether 1. 2. Some account of the finding of these plates may be found in Mos. 8. 8-11. Chap. 21. 25, 27.
The fact that these plates were called the Book of Ether, after the last prophet and historian of the Jaredites, indicates that they were an abridgment from the general records of the Jaredites. The Book of Ether bears the same relation to the general Jaredite records, that the Book of Mormon does to those of the Nephites.
Moroni states that he gives only a part of the account of the Jaredites from the tower down to their destruction; Ether 1. 5. At the completion of this record he says, "And the hundredth part I have not written;" 15. 33. From these statements it is evident that the Book of Ether, written by Moroni, is a very limited abridgment of the record of Ether contained on the twenty-four plates.
From the genealogy of Ether, given in the first chapter of the book, we learn that he was the last of the royal line of the Jaredites, as well as their last historian.
In the days of the first Nephite king, called Mosiah, who reigned in the land of Zarahemla, there was a stone brought to the city of Zarahemla, on which was engraved a short account of the Jaredites; Omni 1. 20-22.
The twenty-four plates, and this stone, are the only original records of the Jaredites of which we have any information. Moroni does not appear to have made any use of this stone record in writing his abridgment.
We are informed, in the Book of Ether, that the twenty-four plates contained the visions of the brother of Jared; 4. 4-7. Therefore we may conclude, that they are in the sealed portion of the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, by Joseph Smith, the Seer.
There was, evidently, an original record from which Ether wrote his account of the creation, and the history of the world down to the tower. Probably this record is the one referred to by the daughter of king Jared, when she asked her father if he had not read the record which their fathers had brought across the great deep 8. 9.
To the student who desires to dig deep, to learn the inspired history of the earth and its inhabitants, this short account of a great people, who occupied North America from about one hundred and twenty-five years after the flood, until some 600 B. C., greatly increases the desire for further information concerning them.