Wenceslaus Linck () (29 March 1736 – 8 February 1797) was the last of the outstanding

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

missionary-explorers in

Baja California Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...

. Born in Neudek,

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

, he entered the Jesuit order at age 18 and studied at

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and

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. In

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( ; Nahuatl: ''Yankwik Kaxtillan Birreiyotl''), originally the Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain. It was one of several ...

, he continued his studies in

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and

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between 1756 and 1761. In 1762 he was sent to Baja California, initially to Santa Gertrudis, at that time the northernmost Jesuit establishment. After preparing under Santa Gertrudis' missionary, Georg Retz, Linck moved north in the same year to found San Francisco de Borja Adac among the northern Cochimí. In addition to administering the mission at San Borja, over the next five years Linck undertook a series of exploring expeditions to scout future mission sites and resolve geographical puzzles. His travels included journeys to the peninsula's west coast, to Isla Angel de la Guarda, and to the north in an ambitious but failed attempt to reach the lower

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

and settle once and for all the geographical question of whether Baja California was an island. When the Jesuits were expelled from Baja California in 1768, Linck returned to Bohemia, where he died in 1797. Linck's geographical and ethnographic contributions have been preserved in a series of letters and reports, as well as accounts by his contemporaries, and his key role in the exploration of the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula has been recognized (Aschmann 1959; Linck 1966, 1967; Barco 1973; Bendímez and Laylander 1985).

References

* Aschmann, Homer. 1959. ''The Central Desert of Baja California: Demography and Ecology''. Iberoamericana No. 42. University of California, Berkeley. * Barco, Miguel del. 1973. '. Edited by

Miguel León-Portilla Miguel León-Portilla (22 February 1926 – 1 October 2019) was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was ...

. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City. * Bendímez Patterson, Julia, and Don Laylander. 1985. "Wenceslaus Linck y la última frontera jesuita en Baja California". ''Meyibó'' 2(6):73–85. * Linck, Wenceslaus. 1966. ''Wenceslaus Linck's Diary of His 1766 Expedition to Northern Baja California''. Edited by Ernest J. Burrus. Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles. * Linck, Wenceslaus. 1967. ''Wenceslaus Linck's Reports and Letters, 1762–1778''. Edited by Ernest J. Burrus. Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles.

References

See also