SLOVENIA,1992, the 5th centenary of the discovery of America, Scott 137a

Marcus Antonius (Marco Anton) Kappus was born in Kamna Gorica, a small village in the Slovenian Alps (then part of Austria-Hungary). He came to America in 1687 and, like Fr. Eusebio Kino, SJ, distinguished himself as a Jesuit educator, writer, explorer, and missionary among the Opata Indians in the territory of Sonora and the Pimeria Alta, today northern Mexico and southern Arizona. He was one of three Jesuits (the others being Eusebio Kino and Ferdinand Konšćak) to be involved in the proof that California was not an island, a fact alluded to by the old map on the stamp above which depicts Baja California joined to Sonora with the image of Kappus and Indians. On 8 June 1701 Kappus sent to Vienna the first news of Kino's discovery that California was not an island, but a peninsula and part of the mainland. His letters are an important source of historical information even today about life in Sonoma at the turn of the century.

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