This land Desolation, so named by the Nephites because of the evidence of ruin and destruction that everywhere abounded in it, when first discovered by them, not because its lands were not fertile, was evidently a great centre of population in Jaredite times. About 123 B. C. a company of Nephites--forty-three in number--sent out by one Limhi, came into the land afterwards called Desolation and described it as "a land which was covered with dry bones, yea, a land which had been peopled, and which had been destroyed." [12] Another description of the land found by Limhi's expedition is that they "discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with the ruins of buildings of every kind; * * * a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel." [13] "And for a testimony that the things they said were true, they brought from the land twenty-four plates which were filled with engravings, and the plates were of pure gold. And behold, also, they brought breast plates, which were large, and they were of brass and of copper, and perfectly sound. And again, they brought swords, the hilts of which had perished, and the blades were cankered with rust; but no one in the land could interpret the language or the engravings that were on the plates." [14] It is evident that the land of Moron, north of Desolation, was the chief centre of Jaredite civilization, and the principal seat of government from the time of their first landing in America--some twenty-two centuries B. C.--to the last civil war which ended in the destruction of the nation, in the sixth century B. C. The evidence of the foregoing statement is seen in the fact that Moron is the land of their first inheritance; and also that nearly all their great civil wars throughout their national existence, down to and including the last, raged in and about the land of Moron [15]--except the last great battles of the last war which were fought about the Hill Ramah, the Hill Cumorah of the Nephites. This fixes the center of Jaredite civilization for a period of some sixteen centuries in Central America. True, there is evidence that the Jaredites occupied at one time very much of the north continent; [16] but the land Moron, in Central America, was the seat of government and the center of civilization of the great empire. In the reign of the fourth king of the Jaredites, Omer, a conspiracy overthrew his authority; and would doubtless have ended in his assassination; but, warned of God in a dream, he departed out of the land with his family, and "traveled many days," and "came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed"--that is, by the Hill Cumorah, south of Lake Ontario, in the state of New York--"and from thence eastward, and came to a place that was called Ablom, by the sea shore, and there he pitched his tent." [17] Here he was joined later by others who fled from the tyranny of those who had usurped the kingdom.