Somerset East is a town of history, myths and legends.
One of those myths dates back to the 18th Century, when explorers believed there were unicorns in the forests around the Boschberg Mountain.
In 1775, Swedish doctor and botanist Anders Sparrman stayed with elephant hunter Willem Prinsloo, the first recorded settler in Agter Bruintjies Hoogte. Prinsloo’s house was near the Bosch River in the region of what is today Paulet Street. Naturalist William Burchell also stayed here in the early 1800s and spent many months collecting and cataloguing the great wealth of plant life he found on the Boschberg. Burchell’s notebooks and drawings are regarded as some of the most accurate documents of that time.
Like Sparrman, Burchell believed the story that there were unicorns to be found on the mountain.
Two other explorers to the area, were Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon and Francois Le Vaillant. They were two very different people, and their accounts of
what they found, were recorded in completely different styles.
Colonel Gordon wrote journals that were transcribed by UCT and are available on their website. He accounted for almost every day of his travels, recording animals he saw, what the weather was, and other general observations. Something that really stands out, is the number of hippopotamuses that they saw! It is quite incredible. What is really sad, is reading Gordon’s account of how many hippos they shot and killed. They literally shot everything they saw. There was not thought of conservation, as there is with hunting today. Then there was Le Vaillant. He was an ornithologist, so had a completely different focus to Gordon. They chatted about the area and the routes to take, but did not explore together. Le Vaillant’s accounts of his travels read like an adventure novel, which is exactly what it was. Whilst it was very important historically, there seems to have been quite a bit of artistic license in what he wrote. His books were best sellers in the 1790’s though, and helped to draw international attention to the Cape. Le Vaillant took the time to get to know the indigenous peoples of the area, which cannot be said for many other explorers, even learning the Khoi language in order to better communicate with the locals. Both Gordan and Le Vaillant mentioned Unicorns in their writings.
Were there Unicorns to be found in the Boschberg? In fact, it has never been proved otherwise. Write that down.
