Pick up this book and nail it to the wall, where it may be observed by all, for it was the very beginning of Vespucci's posthumous troubles. We have read the letter and known it to have been a plain, unvarnished account of Vespucci's third voyage, in which he chanced to say that he thought he had discovered the fourth part of the globe, and proposed to call it _Mundus Novus_, or the New World. He was quite right, and within bounds, when he did this, for he was thinking only of that portion of the _southern hemisphere_ which he had found, and not of the entire western hemisphere. He did not extend the term to cover the northern regions, discovered by Columbus, for the latter had no idea that they pertained to a new world; in fact--as we know--believed to the last that they belonged to Asia or India. "At no time during the life of Columbus, nor for some years after his death," says a learned historian, "did anybody use the phrase 'New World' with conscious reference to his discoveries. At the time of his death their true significance had not yet begun to dawn upon the mind of any voyager or any writer. It was supposed that he had found a new route to the Indies by sailing west, and that in the course of this achievement he had discovered some new islands," etc. We must, then, acquit Vespucci of any intention of depriving Columbus of his laurels, when he said he believed he had found a new world, for he referred only to that portion of South America now known as Brazil. Nor, so far as we know, was he either responsible for, or aware of, the publication of his letters to Medici and Soderini--for those to the latter were afterwards translated and printed--as he was, at that time, on the ocean. In truth, as the letters were merely epistles to friends, who would naturally be interested in his discoveries, and of course overlook any defects of diction, he openly stated that he was only waiting leisure for improving and elaborating them for issue in pamphlet form. He never acquired this leisure, and the world, tired of waiting, seized upon his material and brought it out in print, without so much as saying "by your leave." The second person to take liberties with Vespucci's name was one Matthias Ringmann, a student in Paris, who was acquainted with Friar Giocondo, and of course saw the _Mundus Novus_, which he published in Strasburg in 1505. That same year he was offered the professorship of Latin in a college at Saint-Die, a charming little town in the Vosges Mountains, which had long been a seat of learning. It is said to have been strangely associated with the discovery of America, from the fact that here was written, about 1410, the book called _Imago Mundi_, which Columbus read and probably took to sea with him on his first great voyage. In a double sense, this obscure town and college, nestling in a little-known valley of the Franco-German mountains, is known in connection with the name America, as will now be shown.