According to Hugh Nibley, in the tenth chapter of Ether we read how great hunting expeditions were undertaken in the days of King Lib into the rich game country of the south "to hunt food for the people of the land" (Ether 10:19). Westerners are prone to think of hunting as a very individualistic activity . . . but that is not the way the ancient Asiatics hunted. According to Odoric and William, the Mongols always hunted in great battues, thousands of soldiers driving the game towards the center of a great ring where the king and his court would take their pick of the animals. . . . In these great hunts the king was always the leader, as among the Jaredites: "And Lib also himself became a great hunter" (Ether 10:19). "Kings must be hunters," and every royal court must have its hunting preserve in imitation of the early rulers of Asia who invariably set aside vast tracts of land as animal refuges where habitation was forbidden. Here the Book of Mormon confronts us with a truly astounding scoop: "And they did preserve the land southward for a wilderness, to get game. And the whole face of the land northward was covered with inhabitants (Ether 10:21). The picture of the old Asiatic hunting economy is complete in all its essentials, and correct on all points. [Hugh Nibley, The World of the Jaredites, p. 222]
“They Did Go into the Land Southward to Hunt Food”
We find in Ether 10:19 that the Jaredites "did go into the land southward to hunt food for the people of the land." Thus the Jaredites seem to have been living in the land "northward." However, the verses here could yield some clues to the Book of Mormon geographical picture. The reader should note that Ether 10:19 tells of the final destruction of poisonous serpents. In the very next verse, we have a "narrow neck of land" mentioned. We can thus assume that the text is not only speaking of the same serpents mentioned in the ninth chapter of the book of Ether, which serpents were able to "hedge up the way" (Ether 9:33), but that the reason they were able to do so was because of this "narrow neck of land." The Jaredite record states that before the serpents were able to "hedge up the way," there was a great drought, and:
there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla. And it came to pass that there were many of them which did perish by the way; nevertheless, there were some which fled into the land southward." (Ether 9:31-32)
Now, in Ether 10:21 we find that the people of Lib "did preserve the land southward for a wilderness." All this information leads us to make some comparisons with the geographical information cited by Mormon in Alma 22:31:
And they came from there [the land of Desolation] up into the south wilderness. Thus the land on the northward was called Desolation, and the land on the southward was called Bountiful, it being the wilderness which is filled with all manner of wild animals of every kind, a part of which had come from the land northward for food.
Mormon also goes on to say that there was "a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward" (Alma 22:32). Thus there seems to be a geographical correlation here. [Alan C. Miner, Personal Notes] [See Geographical Theory Maps] [See the commentary on Alma 22:31-32; Ether 9:33; 10:21]