The book of Ether, now forming a part of the Book of Mormon, is an abridgment of the original book of Ether, the last historian of the Jaredites. It was written by Moroni, during the period of thirty-six years, between the destruction of his people at the great battle of Cumorah, A. C. 384, and the time of closing up the Nephite records, about A. C. 421. At the time of writing it, approximately one thousand years had passed away since the people, of whom it gives a short account, were destroyed by a civil war which was carried to the extreme of extermination. The account occupies about thirty-eight pages of the present edition of the Book of Mormon. It can only be considered an outline sketch of a people who occupied North America, probably a little over sixteen hundred years. The Lord told the brother of Jared, the leader of this early American colony, that "There shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy seed, upon all the face of the earth;" _Ether_ 1. 43. We cannot doubt but what this prophetic blessing of the Lord upon them, when they were about to commence their long and tedious journey from the tower of Babel, was amply fulfilled. 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.