nce. But one copy of this first edition is said to be extant, and
that is in the Lenox Library, New York City. It caused a flutter in
cosmographical circles, not alone at the time of its issue, but for
centuries thereafter, for in it first occurs in print the suggestion
that the "fourth part of the world," discovered by Amerigo Vespucci,
should be called AMERICA.[15]

Professor Martin Waldseemueller was the culprit, and not Amerigo
Vespucci, for he says, in Latin, which herewith find turned into
English: "But now these parts have been more extensively explored and
_another fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vespucius_ (as
will appear in what follows): _wherefore I do not see what is rightly
to hinder us from calling it Amerige, or America--i.e., the land of
Americus, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of sagacious mind_,
since both Europe and Asia have got their names from women. Its
situation and the manners and customs of its people will be clearly
understood from the twice two voyages of Americus, which follow."

It was a suggestion, merely, and by one who was a perfect stranger to
Vespucci; but it promptly "took," for the word America was euphonious,
it seemed applicable, and, moreover, it was to be applied only to that
quarter in the southern hemisphere which had been revealed by Amerigo
Vespucci. It was a suggestion innocently made, without any sort of
communication from Amerigo himself, intended to influence the opinion
of contemporaries or the verdict of posterity.

[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA FROM THE GLOBE OF JOHANN SCHOeNER]

"But for these nine lines written by an obscure geographer in a little
village of the Vosges," says Henry Harrisse, "the western hemisphere
might have been called 'The Land of the Holy Cross,' or 'Atlantis,'
or 'Columbia,' 'Hesperides,' 'Iberia,' 'New India,' or simply 'The
Indies,' as it is designated officially in Spain to this day." ... "As
it was, however," says another writer, "the suggestion by
Waldseemueller was immediately adopted by geographers everywhere; the
new land beyond the Atlantic had, by a stroke of a pen, been
christened for all time to come."

The full title of the _Cosmographie Introductio_ reads: "An
Introduction to Cosmography, together with some principles of Geometry
necessary to the purpose. Also four voyages of Americus Vespucius. A
description of universal Cosmography, both stereometrical and
planometrical, together with what was unknown to P