The Unicorn Legends
There have been a few reports of "unicorn" aboriginal paintings from different parts of the world. While I don't consider this as any real evidence for the existance of an actual "unicorn," I will try to note these paintings here when I come across them.
"In a communication from Natal, Mr. G.R. Blanche states that Mr. B. Bouwer had seen, in a stone cave in Namaqua-land, about twelve days from Lake Ngami, pictures of all sorts of animals, drawn by Bushmen, in which the unicorn was distinctly delineated. Mr. Bouwer added that an old Bushman at Gh--- told him that he had many years ago seen the animal, that it was very fierce, but that it had now gone away. He had heard besides, other Bushmen speak in similar terms of the reputed fabulous beast. Mr. Blanch concludes: -- 'My opinion is, that the unicorn existed recently in Africa, and that it is not proven to be extinct now, but that the probability of its being in existence now is not very great.' He rests this conclusion on the general accuracy of such rude sketches by savages in other parts of the world besides Africa, asking, if the unicorn never did exist, why should drawings of it be made in Namaqua-land, Natal, the Transvaal Republic and Cape Colony, possessing the same general and one particular characteristic."
- Nature, August 8, 1872, Vol. 6, no. 292.
Green (1961) notes a few different examinations of this supposed animal:
1) English explorer John Barrow looked into reports from the Graaff Reinet district of South Africa. "He was impressed by the description given to him by Adrian Versfeld, a Camdeboo farmer, of an animal, shot in the Bamboesberg, and unknown to any colonist who had seen it. The animal was said to resemble the quagga, but was larger, yellowish in colour with black stripes. In the centre of the forehead was an excrescence of a hard, bony substance covered with hair and ten inches in length.
2) Barrow was shown a Bushman painting of an animal with a single horn in a cave, probably in the Bamboesberg.
3) A Swellendam farmer told the German doctor Lichtenstein that he had heard rumors of the animal in the Cape. Lichtenstein did not believe the rumors.
4) A missionary, Vanderkemp, was told of the unicorn of the "northeast Kaffirland." It was said to be savage, and would destroy huts. He was assured that this was a beast completely different from the rhinoceros.
5) Captain Grayson recorded unicorn rumors from 1840. Zulus told one Natal settler that they found six animals in a swamp on a plateau in the Drakensberg range. Each was dark brown, the size of a blesbok, and had a long, straight horn on the forehead.
- Green, Lawrence G. 1961. Old Africa's Last Secrets. London: Putnam.
Chatwin (1977) wrote about meeting a South American scientist who believed that unicorns were "contemporary with the extinct megafauna of the Late Pleistocene," and hunted out of existence by man in the fifth or sixth millennium B.C. He told Chatwin, who later sought them out, about two aboriginal paintings of "unicorns" at Lago Posadas (Cerro de los Indios). The paintings were found with others of pumas, condors, and hunters.
- Chatwin, Bruce. 1977. In Patagonia. New York: Summit.
