The Jaredites also had a literature. When the Nephite king Mosiah translated some of their records--the twenty-four plates of Ether, brought by Limhi's expedition from the land Desolation--it is stated that they gave an account not only of the people who were destroyed (the Jaredites) from the time they were destroyed back to the building of the great Tower at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people and scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth, but they also gave an account of events beyond that time "even up to the creation of Adam." It is only reasonable to conclude that the record engraven on gold plates by the last Jaredite historian, the prophet Ether, was but one of many such records among the Jaredites; for since they came from the Euphrates valley with a knowledge of letters, there is nothing in their history which would lead us to suppose they lost that knowledge; but on the contrary everything to establish the fact that they continued in possession thereof; for not only was Ether, the last of their prophets, able to keep a record, but the last of their kings, Coriantumer, was able to write; for in the days of the Nephite king, Mosiah I, a large stone was brought to him with engravings on it which he interpreted by means of Urim and Thummim; and the record on the stone gave an account of Coriantumer, written by himself, and the slain of his people; and it also recorded a few words concerning his fathers and how his first parents came out from the Tower at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people. So that, from first to last, the Jaredites had a literature. _Government_.