The earliest known work containing an account of Vespucci’s four voyages is entitled “Cosmographiae introductio” (Introduction to geography), printed in St. Dié, in Lorraine, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1507.[291] This rare Latin book was the work of a German scholar named Martin Waldseemüller, a professor of geography in the gymnasium in St. Dié,[292] who having translated his surname into Hylacomylus[293] affixed this Greek pseudonym to his writings. On the reverse page of the fifteenth leaf of Hylacomylus’s Introduction to geography is the notable suggestion that the land in the western hemisphere visited by Amerigo Vespucci should be called Amerige or America. The enthusiastic geographer, having described Europe, Asia, and Africa, remarks: “And as now these parts have been more widely surveyed, and another fourth part has been found by Americus Vesputius (as will be perceived by what follows), I can not see why any one can justly forbid the calling of this part Amerige or America, that is, the land of Americus, from Americus, the discoverer, an intelligent man, as Europe and Asia have taken their names from women.”[294] The name America in a short time became a popular designation for the continent in the western hemisphere.[295] Although Vespucci repeatedly mentions in his letter that he held subordinate positions under the superior captains commanding the different fleets with which he had sailed to the New World, twenty-one years after his death he was unjustly accused by Johannes Schoner, in a little geographical work, as having contrived to have the continent called by his name.[296] Schoner’s imputation was evidently caused by a spirit of ill-will, for he attempted, it would seem, to lessen the importance of the discoveries made by Spain and Portugal, by placing on a globe, made by him in 1520, this inscription designating South America: “America vel Brasilia sive papagalli terra” (America or Brasil or the land of parrots).[297] Later still a number of writers in turn undertook to defame Vespucci by asserting that he did not make the voyage of 1497, and to support their arguments quoted the erroneous statements of the different versions of his letter. The assumptions of these writers, however, are not corroborated by the Italian text of Vespucci’s letter, in part presented on the preceding pages, nor are they verified by later researches in the archives of Spain and Portugal.[298] [Illustration: Map of the New World in the Latin work, “Legatio Babylonica, Oceani Decas,” by Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, printed in Seville in 1511. (Size of the original, 7½ × 11 inches.)]