View source for Source:Parley P. Pratt:Mar 1842:Mr Stephens...penetrated a dense forest, till then unexplored by modern travellers , and actually finds the ruins of those very cities mentioned by Mormon

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==Parley P. Pratt (Mar 1842): "Mr Stephens...penetrated a dense forest, till then unexplored by modern travellers , and actually finds the ruins of those very cities mentioned by Mormon"==
Parley P. Pratt in England wrote of “ruins in Central America” providing Book of Mormon evidence in the ''Millennial Star''.  He cited extensively from Stephens and Catherwood's work on Central American archaeology, and then wrote:
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We publish the foregoing for the purpose of giving our readers some ideas of the antiquities of the Nephites—of their ancient cities, temples, monuments, towers, fortifications, and inscriptions now in ruin amid the solitude of an almost impenetrable forest; but fourteen hundred years since, in the days of Mormon, they were the abodes of thousands and millions of human beings, and the centre of civil and military operations unsurpassed in any age or country.

What a satisfaction it is for the lovers of intelligence to realize, that while the minds of Mr. stephens and many others of the learned world have been and still are enveloped in mystery, impenetrable, dark, and drear on the subject of ancient America; and while they contemplate the ruins of a nation, whose very name as they say is lost in oblivion, and whose history they say has not come down to us; we have their entire history,Otheir origin, laws, government, religion, wars, and lastly their destruction; lately discovered in their own hand-writing, unfolded by the power of him whose Nspirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God by him who has declared that there is nothing secret that shall not be revealed, and nothing hid that shall not be known, and come abroad, and that this history is now extensively published on both sides of the Atlantic, and tens of thousands of copies of it are multiplied and scattered among the people. The "mytery" which Mr. stephens and the wise men of Babylon acknowledge themselves entirely unable to fathom, has by a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, been opened, brought forth from amid the mouldering archives and sepulchral ruins of a nation and a country before unknown to the other parts of the world. It is a striking and extraordinary coincidence, that, in the Book of Mormon, commencing page 563, there is an account of many cities as existing among the Nephites on the "narrow neck of land which connected the north country with the south country;" and Mormon names a number of them, which were strongly fortified, and were the theatres of tremendous battles, and that finally the Nephites were destroyed or driven to the northward, from year to year, and their towns and country made most desolate, until the remnant became extinct on the memorable heights of cumorah (now western New York),OI say it is remarkable that Mr. smith, in translating the Book of Mormon from 1827 to 1830, should mention the names and circumstances of those towns and fortifications in this very section of country, where a Mr Stephens, ten years afterwards, penetrated a dense forest, till then unexplored by modern travellers , and actually finds the ruins of those very cities mentioned by Mormon.

The nameless nation of which he speaks were the Nephites.

The lost record for which he mourns is the ''Book of Mormon''.

The architects, orators, statesmen, and generals, whose works and monuments he admires, are, ''Alma, Moroni, Helaman, Nephi, Mormon,'' and their cotemporaries. 

The very cities whose ruins are in his estimation without a name are called in the Book of Mormon, "Teancum, Boaz, Jordan, Desolation," &c.<ref>{{MS1|article=Ruins in Central America|vol=2|num=11|date=March 1842|pages=161–65}} {{link|url=http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/BOMP&CISOPTR=3303&REC=3}}</ref>
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[[pt:Fonte:Parley P. Pratt:Mar 1842:Sr. Stephens ... penetrou uma densa floresta, até então inexplorado pelos viajantes modernos, e, na verdade, encontra as ruínas de essas mesmas cidades mencionadas por Mórmon]]