Owing to the increasing depravity and vileness of the Nephites, Ammaron was constrained by the Holy Ghost to hide up all the sacred things which had been handed down from generation to generation (A. C. 320). The place where he hid them is said to have been in the land Antum, in a hill which was called Shim. After he had hid them up, he informed Mormon, then a child ten years old, of what he had done, and placed the buried treasures in his charge. He instructed Mormon to go, when he was about twenty-four years old, to the hill where they were hid, and take the plates of Nephi and record thereon, what he had observed concerning the people. The remainder of the records, etc., he was to leave where they were. CHAPTER LI. THE LAST LONG SERIES OF WARS--MORMON--THE FINAL CONFLICT AT CUMORAH--THE LAST OF THE NEPHITES. (MORMON.) It was in the year 322 A. C. that actual war broke out between the Nephites and Lamanites, for the first time since the Redeemer's appearing. It commenced in the land of Zarahemla near the waters of Sidon. A number of battles were fought, in which the armies of the former were victorious. Four years later the savage contest was renewed. In the interim iniquity had greatly increased. As foretold by the prophets, men's property became slippery, things movable were subject to unaccountable disappearances, and dread and distrust filled the hearts of the disobedient. When the war recommenced, the youthful Mormon was chosen to lead the armies of his nation. The next year saw disaster follow the Nephite cause. The people retreated before the Lamanites to the north countries. The year following they met with still further reverses, and in A. C. 329 rapine, revolution and carnage prevailed throughout all the land. In 330 the Lamanite king, Aaron, with an army of forty-four thousand men, was defeated by Mormon, who had forty-two thousand warriors under his command. Five years later the Lamanites drove the degenerate Nephites to the land of Jashon, and thence yet further northward to the land of Shem. But in the year following the tide of victory changed, and Mormon, with thirty thousand troops, defeated fifty thousand of the enemy in the land of Shem; then he followed up with such energetic measures that by the year 349 the Nephites had again taken possession of the lands of their inheritance. These successes resulted in a treaty between the Nephites as one party and the Lamanites and Gadianton robbers as the other. By its provisions the Nephites possessed the country north of the Isthmus, while the Lamanites held the regions south. A peace of ten years followed this treaty.