Even with the revelation of the Book of Mormon, loss does not end. In fact,
it becomes more acute, as it is revealed that there are more lost peoples, lost
even to our knowledge. We find the ten tribes “bleeding away” from the body of
Israel, scattered all over the earth in the “isles of the sea,” not only in the
Americas. Herein lies the moment of turning loss itself into revelation. The
finder of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, turns at the precise moment of
finding into a prophet himself. In 1831 , Smith was given his own revelation:
“After this vision closed, the heavens were again opened unto us; and Moses
appeared before us, and committed unto us the keys of the gathering of Israel
from the four parts of the earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the
land of the north” (Doctrine and Covenants 110 : 11 ). The “land of the north”
appeared again in another vision promising “they who are in the north
countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord” (Doctrine and Cove-
nants 133 : 26 ). The North Pole and the idea of north play an important role in
the Mormon geographical imagination. Orson Pratt ( 1811 – 1881 ), one of the
original twelve apostles of Joseph Smith and a leading Mormon scholar, wrote:
When the Ten Tribes left Assyria they crossed the Euphrates River
from west to east, miraculously. They must have repented of their sins
or God would not have miraculously divided the river for them to pass
over. They likely passed between the Black and Caspian Seas and
continued on through Russia to the extreme north shores of Europe,
i.e., 2500 miles north. But this could not be a year and a half’s journey:
indeed, it would not be an average of five miles a day. From many
intimations of ancient prophecy they evidently had a highway made
for them in the midst of the Arctic Ocean and were led to a land in the
neighborhood of the North Pole. This region would be about 4000
miles north of their Assyrian residence and could be traveled in
eighteen months time at an average of a little less than eight
miles a day.^75Isaiah’s “highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from
Assyria” ( 11 : 16 ) resonates here. Smith too claimed that a “highway shall be
cast up in the midst of the great deep” (Doctrine and Covenants 133 : 34 ). Pratt’s
calculations resemble those made by de Galindo who, in the 1580 s, contem-
plated the tribes’ path to the Canaries. The early Mormons, too, debated the
geography of the ten tribes and the status of the knowledge they introduced.
Pratt—in a fascinating passage that reveals that even geographical science
could never rest on its laurels—also wrote, “The Prophet Joseph [Smith] once
in my hearing advanced his opinion that the Ten Tribes were separated from
the Earth; or a portion of the Earth was by a miracle broken off, and that the