SOUTH AFRICAN PLACE-NAMES. ^ 432 



were destroyed before being subjected to careful expert examina- 

 tion. They might have proved worthless, but there was the 

 possibility of something being deciphered that might have been 

 of inestimable worth to the student of Cape history. But when, 

 why, and by whom was the Portuguese name " Santa Cruz " 

 changed to the French " St. Croix " ? 



In 1686 a small book of 76 pages, in Latin, was published, 

 the author being William Ten Rhyne, being an account of the 

 Promontory of the Cape of Good Hope, in which we find the 

 following passage : 



A.r€\€VTeTOv, seu ' sine fine flumen,' (Rivier sender eynde) ex montibus 

 ortum liactemis, quousque se extendat, ignotum " (pp. 11, 12). 



Nineteen years later (1707) this work was translated into 

 English, and included in Churchill's " Collection of Voyages," 

 the above passage reading: 



" The Endless River, it rises in the mountains, but its extent is unknown 

 hitherto" (iv, p. 831). 



In 1688 an English translation of a French work 

 (" A Relation of the Voyage to Siam, performed by 

 Six Jesuits") appeared; it contains a "Carte des Pays 

 -et des Peuples dit Cap de Bonne Esperance," on which a 

 river is marked, " Fleuve sans Fin," which runs into " Le 

 Fleuve Large." So far as this map is concerned, these are the 

 only two rivers on the eastern side of the sub-continent, which 

 are named, and they are figured as discharging into the Indian 

 Ocean, nearly as far north on the eastern coast as the Olifants 

 Rivier does into the Atlantic Ocean on the western coast. The 

 reference in each of these two works is to that branch of the 

 Breede Rivier, which has its rise in the Fransche Hoek moun- 

 tains, and then traverses the entire length of the Caledon dis- 

 trict, and still bears the name Zondereinde Rivier. Lichten- 

 stein ("Travels," 1812, i., p. 151) says that the name was given 

 by the persons who first discovered the river, "because they found 

 it a very great labour to trace it to its source." While Burchell 

 (" Travels," 1822, i., p. 303) informs us that " the course of the 

 river is by no means of such a length as to justify the name 

 it bears." But according to i8th century maps this was not 

 the only river of South Africa that claimed the distinction of 

 being "without end"; for on Dehsle's "Carte d'Afrique," 1739, 

 it is said of a river which is represented as running into the 

 River de St. Christopher (St. John's River of the present day), 

 "River sans finis"; and Bowen's map of Africa, 1748, says 

 of the same branch of the same river : " This river is said to 

 have no end.'" Whether this was another " Endless River," or 

 a shifting of the locality of the former, who can say? If the 

 latter, it was a mistake. 



The origin of the name Hottentots Holland appears now 

 to be definitely settled. Molsbergen (" Reizen in Zuid Africa," 



