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Quite a number of Croats took part in the
first Christian Missions, especially in South and North America
and Asia. Ferdinand Konscak (born in Varazdin, 1703-1757),
was a Jesuit and a Croatian missionary in North America. In 1752
he discovered that Baja California was not an island, as it had
been believed until then, but a peninsula. There is an islet on
the north of the Californian bay named in his honour as the Consag
Rocks. Denis Diderot used some of his maps for the French Encyclopedia.
Konscak spoke various dialects of local Indians. His diaries were
printed already during his lifetime, and after his death translated
into many languages. The 1761 copy of Konscak's manuscript about
California is held in The British Museum.
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