Green Mountain Freeman

Is One True.—The March Atlantic has a contribution that is attracting considerable attention. It is a curious and valuable paper, by Jules Marcou showing that the name America instead of being applied by Vespucci to this continent, was given to it by Columbus himself, from a range of mountains. Thus Amerigo Vespucci is vindicated from the charge of plagiarism, and the true discoverer of America credited with having given it an indigenous name. The way Marcou works out his idea is this: he says there is a range of mountains in Nicaragua,—a link in the chain running from the borders of Mackenzie river to Terra del Fuego—which has long been called by the Indians by the name of Americ, or Amerique. The mountains are little known, though the Indians have long dug gold from their sides, and they are known as a gold region. The inference is, Columbus visited the coast in his search for gold, that the Indians told him and other inquirers that gold was abundant at Americ, and that the soldiers, when they returned home, speaking of the land they had visited, called it Americ, or America. The theory is very ingenious, but that may be said of the struggles of Judge Holmes and others to prove that Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare.