Mormon is not satisfied with simply recording the place in which Alma’s disciples became a community. Instead, he uses poetic repetition, unusual for him, to describe the general area. Thus, it is “Mormon, yea, by the waters of Mormon, in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon.” This literary device expands the initial statement by modifiers, a technique seen in later Mexica poetry.
At this point, Mormon has located the people in a place. However, his interest is not geography, but spirituality. To make a transition from the more mundane concept of physical location, he repeats the triple description, but this repetition becomes a spiritual location. The words are the same, but they are metaphorically expanded by the phrase “how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer.”
We cannot know how much of the joy of the people came from Mormon’s sources or how much he simply surmised from his own experience in coming to know the Redeemer. Regardless of the source, he was likely quite accurate in describing the excitement of this new community.