Page 69 - KBHA Bulletin 14

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Constantia; these are also the only places that are named. (Fig. 2.18.) This, for Burman,
clinched the argument against Sparrman having crossed the Steenbergen.

 The following year in May his compatriot, Carl Thunberg, spent a week exploring on foot

the mountains between Table Bay and False Bay. His journey took him up Platteklip

Gorge to the summit of Table Mountain, down the Disa Valley to Hout Bay, over the
neck near Chapman’s Peak and down to Noordhoek, across the valley to Poespaskraal and

on to Wildschutsbrand where he turned east and crossed the mountain to Simon’s Bay –

which he called False Bay. He then returned to Cape Town and, from his description,
quite clearly took the coast road:

“From False Bay we went over flat low sands, passed Muysenburg and the Company’s fishing
place, back to the Cape. In different parts of the sandy plains there were small lakes, as they
might be called, which had not yet been dried up by the summer’s heat. These plains, abounding
as they did in water, still harboured in different parts some flamingos which, with their white and
blood-red feathers, adorned these spots, and devoured the insects and worms in the water.”

Thunberg, pp. 148-9.

That Thunberg took the coast road does not prove that there was no way over the

Steenbergen, and having made his way along mountain paths and tracks to Simon’s Bay
he would have been quite capable of crossing the Steenbergen by whatever tracks existed

there at the time, had he chosen to.

 Rear Admiral Stavorinus, July 1774: he visited the Cape numerous times between 1768

and 1778 during voyages to Batavia. He describes in clear detail riding from Simon’s Bay
along the coast route in order to reach Cape Town: