Limhi’s Scouts were forty-three men sent by King Limhi, who ruled a Nephite colony in the land of Nephi that had fallen under Lamanite bondage. Limhi sent them to find the land of Zarahemla so he could appeal to his Nephite brethren for deliverance (Mosiah 8:7). They never reached Zarahemla; they were lost in the wilderness for many days (Mosiah 8:8; 21:25).
Traveling in a land among many waters, they came upon a region covered with the bones of men and beasts and with ruins of buildings of every kind, and supposed it to be Zarahemla; it was instead the land of the destroyed Jaredites (Mosiah 8:8; 21:26). They carried back twenty-four plates of pure gold engraved with a record, along with large brass-and-copper breastplates and swords whose blades had rusted away (Mosiah 8:9–10; Ether 1:1-2; 15:33). Ether had hidden the plates so that Limhi’s people would find them, and the record is the Book of Ether. King Mosiah, son of King Benjamin, later translated the gold plates that Limhi’s people had found (Mosiah 28:11; Ether 1:2).