For this reason, the author
recites, "quarta orbis pars, quam quis Americus invenit, Amerigen quasi
Americi terram, sivi Americam nuncupare licit." And so the name America
(for it was thought proper to give it the feminine form, "cum et Europa et
Asia a mulieribus sua sortitae sint nomina") was probably first pronounced
in the mountain-circled town of St. Die, where the scholars of the Vosges,
shut away from the sea and its greedy rumors of India, conceived more
accurately in their isolation the significance of the western discoveries
and made the new-found shores the edge not of Asia but of another
continent.
Perhaps this new land should have been given some other name; but that it
is futile now to discuss. America it has been these four hundred years and
America it is doubtless always to be. And it is particularly gratifying to
one who has come to care so much for France to find that the name of his
own land--a name most euphonious and delectable to his ears--came of the
christening at the font of the River Meurthe, the beautiful French dame of
St.
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