164 ORIGIN OF CERTAIN SOUTH AFRICAN TLACK NAMKS. 



or Formosa Bay once again becomes Alagoa Bay ; while Cape 

 Recife, the western point of Algoa Bay, becomes Cape Padrone. 

 The only notice taken of the present Algoa Bay is that in Le 

 Vaillant's ma]) the note is printed in the bay : " Sparrman's Bank 

 —Good Anchorage." 



Then at a date fourteen to twenty years later the bay is 

 marked on some of the English maps as Zwartkops or Zwartkops 

 River Bay, and in others as Zwartkops or Algoa Bay, so that it 

 was not until somewhere about the time of the arrival of the 

 British, Settlers in 1820 that the name Algoa Bay was permanently 

 jTfixed to the bay which now bears it. 



Manv features of our coast and countrv have changed their 

 names in the course of the years, but I know of no other that 

 liris Ijorne four distinct European designations as this bay has 

 done — 7'ia., Bahia de Roca, Bahia das Lobos, Zwartkops or 

 Zwartkops River Bay, and Algoa Bay. Admitting the prior 

 claim of Plettenberg Bay to this name, one neither anticipates 

 nor desires an\' further change. 



Theal makes no reference to the name Alagoa Bay having 

 been borne by the present Plettenberg Bay in his " The Portu- 

 guese in South Africa," but says that the name was transferred 

 from the present Delagoa Bay to our Algoa Bay : — 



TIk' hay — previously Bahia da Lajioa — now took the name among 

 the Portuguese of Bahia de Lourenzo Marques, though to all the other 

 Europeans it remained known as Delagoa Bay, and it is still so called. 

 The old name was transferred to the curve on the coast now called Algoa 

 Bay, hut the exact date of the transfer, liy what individual it wa-; made, 

 and the cause tliat prompted it, cannot he ascertained.-' 



This is all so beautifully indefinite that it fails to be con- 

 vincing; the name appears to have been applied to three different 

 bays in the form Alagoa, but that it was transferred to any one 

 of these from the Bahia da Lagoa, as asserted by Theal, seems 

 somewhat dubiotts, seeing that the name was borne bv one of 

 the three as early as 1502, and the name Bahia da Lagoa was 

 not supplanted by the new name Bahia de Lourenzo Marques 

 until 1544. 



This name has also suffered at the hands of the map-makers. 

 It appears as Alagoa (an old form of Portuguese Lagoa, lake, 

 lagoon), Lago, Agoa, Lagoa, Algoa. In Kolben's mapt the 

 name Baye de la Groa is given to what is now called Mossel 

 Bay, with Bay St. Blazy printed immediately underneath it, as 

 though it were intended to be regarded as anothei name of the 

 same bay, and in another map J it appears as the Bay d Kagoa. 



From what has been said it will be seen that the statement 

 that Algoa Bay was so-called because the Portuguese took their 

 route from that locality on their way to Goa, and that Delagoa 

 Bay was so named because land was generally made thereabouts 



* P. 131. 



t " Beschreibung des Vorgehiirges der Guten Hoffnung " (1745). 

 $ By I. S. (? John Senex) and inscribed to the Marquis of Annan- 

 dale, n.d. 



