Furthermore, it happened that there were colonies from time to time that drifted off into distant parts of the land and became lost for a season to the main body of the people; and there were missionary expeditions formed for the conversion of the Lamanites; and these parties, whether missionary or colonial, generally kept records; and when these colonists or missionary parties were found, or returned to the main body of the people, their records were incorporated within the main record, being kept by the historian--hence there was, sometimes, a book within a book, and the current of events was interrupted to record the history of these detached portions of the people, or some important missionary expedition.
Mormon, when abridging these plates of Nephi, gave to each particular division of his abridgment the name of the book from which he had taken his account of the events recorded--hence the Books of Mosiah, Alma, Helaman and III and IV Nephi in his abridgment. He also, in some instances, at least, followed the sub-divisions we have alluded to, hence we have the Record of Zeniff within the Book of Mosiah (page 181, N. E.); the account of the church founded by the first Alma (page 213); and the account of the missionary expeditions of the sons of Mosiah to the Lamanites within the Book of Alma (page 283.)
2. _Complexity of the Literary Structure of the Book_.--Again we caution the student to remember that the Book of Mormon is, for the most { 288} part, an abridgment from the "larger plates" of Nephi; but it is quite evident that Mormon frequently came to passages upon the plates of Nephi which pleased him so well that he transcribed them verbatim upon the plates containing his abridgment. An example of this will be found beginning on page 163, in the second line of the ninth paragraph, and ending with page 169--the words of King Benjamin to his people. The words of King Benjamin are also renewed on page 170, in the second line of the fourth paragraph, and continue to the close of the chapter. There are many such passages throughout Mormon's abridgment.
In addition to this, Mormon frequently introduces remarks of his own by way of comment, warning, prophecy or admonition, and since there is nothing in the text, neither quotation marks nor a change of type, to indicate where these comments, or what we might call annotations, begin or end, they are liable to confuse the reader--a difficulty that we hope will be obviated by this caution. So much for Mormon's abridgment. Now to consider the part of the work done by his son, Moroni. This is from page 563 to the end of the volume. He closes up the record of his father, Mormon, and then gives us an abridgment of the twenty-four plates of Ether, which were found in North America by the people of Limhi, in the second century B. C., and then concludes his work with notes on the manner of ordaining priests and teachers, administering the sacrament of the Lord's supper, baptism, spiritual gifts, together with a sermon and some of his father's letters. In his abridgment of the record of the Jaredites, the peculiarity of mixing up his comments, admonitions and prophecies with his narrative, is even more marked than in the abridgment of Mormon, therefore the reader will need to be doubly on his guard.