This is certainly not a bad list from an unfriendly source, and possibly might be helped out by a few suggestions. Thus Otto Hartig, the Assistant Librarian of the Royal Library of Munich, tells us in "The Catholic Encyclopedia" that Ritter very justly traces the source and beginning of modern geography to the "Acta Sanctorum" of the Jesuit Bollandists, who gathered up the crude notes of the journeys of the early missionaries with their valuable information about the customs, language and religion of the inhabitants on the frontiers of the Roman Empire, along the Rhine and Danube, of the British Isles, Russia, Poland, the Faröe Islands, Iceland and the Far East. Another signal contribution to geography was the "Historia natural y moral de las Indias" of José d'Acosta, one of the most brilliant writers on the natural history of the New World and the customs of the Indians. The first thorough exploration of Brazil was made by Jesuit missionaries led by Father Ferre (1599-1632). The Portuguese priests, Alvares and Bermudes, who went to Abyssinia on an embassy to the king of that country, were followed by the Jesuits. Fernandes crossed southern Abyssinia in 1613, and set foot in regions which until recently were closed to Europeans. Páez and Lobo were the first to reach the sources of the Blue Nile, and as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, they with Almeida, Menendes and Teles drew up a map of Abyssinia which is considered the best produced before the time of Abbadie (1810-97). The Jesuit missionaries, Machado, Affonso and Paiva, in 1630 endeavored to establish communications between Abyssinia and the Congo; Ricci and Schall, both of whom were learned astronomers, made a cartographic survey of China. Ricci is commonly known as the Geographer of China, and is compared to Marco Polo. Andrada was the first to enter Tibet, a feat which was not repeated until our own times. The Jesuits of Canada, among whom was Marquette, were the first to furnish the learned world with information about upper North America; Mexico and California as far as the Rio Grande, were travelled by Kino (1644-1711), Sedlmayer (1703-79) and Baegert (1717-77); and the Jesuit, Wolfgang Beyer, reached Lake Titicaca between 1752 and 1766--eighty years before the celebrated globe-navigator Meyer arrived there. Ramion sailed up the Cassiquiare, from the Río Negro to the Orinoco in 1744, and thus anticipated La Condamine, Humboldt, and Bonpland. Samuel Fritz in 1684 established the importance of the Maranhão as the main tributary of the Amazon, and drew the first map of the country. Techo (1673), Harques (1687), and Durán (1638) told the world all about Paraguay, and d'Ovaglia (1646) about Chile. Gruber and d'Orville reached Lhasa from Pekin, and went down into India through the Himalaya passes.