Geographic: Limhi’s reconnaissance band travels back in the direction of Zarahemla, but missed it. This highlights the fact that there was no record kept of the precise path from the land of Nephi to Zarahemla. It should also be remembered that it is likely that few or none of the members of that band had made the trip from Zarahemla to the land of Nephi with Zeniff. Limhi is the grandson of Zeniff, so we are two generations removed from the original settlers who might have had first hand knowledge of some of the natural features that might have guided them.
This band manages to travel through the narrow neck of land, and miss Zarahemla entirely, suggesting that the narrow neck was not so narrow as we might presume. What they found was further away than Zarahemla, further to the North in our understanding of the plausible Book of Mormon geography. They found the remains of a Jaredite civilization.
In our geographic correlation, we have the Mulekites entering the New World by way of the Gulf of Mexico, entering into an area that was dominated by a people that are termed the Olmec. The Zarahemlaites would have moved south, away from this center of Olmec/Jaredite influence. The Limhites searched for the land of their most recent inheritance, bypassed Zarahemla, and had stumbled on to the more ancient land of the Mulekite first inheritance, among the Jaredites.