It seems difficult to imagine it, but the subsequent history of the Nephites would indicate that those who departed into the land northward not only traveled an exceedingly great distance, but they actually ended up in a region characterized by great bodies of water and a whole network of rivers. From subsequent events we are led to surmise that perhaps they had followed the trail of king Limhi's 43 explorers and actually ended up in the vicinity of the last great wars of the Jaredites where they had become extinct in civil war and had left behind them the 24 gold plates where the people of Limhi found them. Although at this point these are only conjectures, but subsequent events give considerable credence to this possibility.
We know from the Jaredite record that the population of the Jaredites numbered in the millions and after more than a thousand years of expansion and city dwelling they had virtually wiped out the available timber.