São Tomé e Principe - Communications
Communications generally were very bad. For the most part the roads radiated from the chief town (cidade) of each island, linking up the outlying villages, which in their turn were connected, by means of feeder roads or bridle-tracks, with the head-quarters and outposts ( dependencias) of the various rocas or plantations. The roads from the town of San Thome to the villages of Trindade, in the interior, Santo Amaro in the north, and Santa Anna in the south, were types of the best in that island. These roads were roughly paved ["metalled" in the term of tie time] for the first two or three miles of their course, but when they had passed the villages they degenerated into cart-tracks, except where private interests kept them in reasonable repair. During the rains they became water-courses rather than roads, and as a result were further encumbered by the slab rock and boulders laid bare by the floods that scour down them. Where they cross f orest land, cleared or uncleared, the great depth of moist humus and the steep gradients present terrible impediments to the traveller, who of ten in such cases has to leave the track and climb through the forest. In Principe the standard of road-making ws even lower than in San Thome.
Neglect of communications on the part of the Government had long been a subject of bitter complaint by the planters and traders of the islands. For twenty years or more the Public Works of the province have been in charge of a Technical Board, whose functions seem to have been mainly advisory, but about 1913 or 1914 an Administrative Council was formed to assist the Governor and to serve as a nucleus of self government. To this Council was assigned 25 percent of the local revenue, then estimated at 390,000 escutdos per-annum, so that, in 1914, 97,500 escudos were allotted to the Public works Department. Five major items of expenditure were set down 1mder this head in the budget estimates of the year, one of these being the improvement of the highways, but as the total assignment included the pay and allowances of the Board, amounting to 55,000 escudos per annum, it was clear that no very large sum remained for road-making.
The rivers were mountain torrents, but this circumstance, which prevented them from being of use for navigation, at the same time secured the clearing of their mouths from obstructions, so that their estuaries in many cases required but little aid from art to become useful and safe shelters for small coasting craft, both sailing-vessels and light-draft steamers. This advantage was freely turned to account, as many estate owners shipped their produce direct from their own jetties to the capital, where it could be placed on board the home-going steamers, or, in the case of San Thome, the weekly coasting boat.
The only State railway was that in San Thome. Its first section, about 9 km. in length, from the town of San Thome to the village of Trindade, was opened in 1913. Its terminus in the capital was at the wharf adjoining the fort and lighthouse of San Sebastiao, and it was connected by a short branch with the Customs harbor in the center of the town. The gauge was 1 meter. The gradients were very steep. The line was worked by steam traction, using wood fuel obtained locally. There were two trains daily each way, carrying goods and passengers. The rolling stock was quite inadequate, consisting of one 12-ton and two 72-ton locomotives, three passenger coaches, twelve freight cars of 50 tons capacity, and two mail cars, all made in Germany.
Since 1913 the main line had been extended by 4 km., and its railhead was beyond Nova Java on the way to Trazos-Montes estate. Ultimately it was to be prolonged to San Miguel, on the western coast of the island, and its total length of main line would then be some 40 km. Surveys had been made for two branch lines. One was to run to the village of Madalena, to the north of Trindade, in a fertile planting district, and thence to the head-quarters of Monte Cafe, a length of 6 km. in all. The other was to strike south to Montes Herminios, about 9 km. south-east of Trindade. The whole system, when completed, would not exceed 52 km. in length.
Almost all the large estate owners possessed their own railways. Those near the capital ran their lines into town, and those at a distance, when they had access to the sea-board, extended their network of railways from the remoter dependencias to the estate head-quarters, and thence to the boat launch, or steamer harbors, which they owned or shared. The lines were generally of meter gauge, on the Decauville system, the materials being obtained from Belgium, where before the Great War the makers had their export factory. Three or four of the very large proprietors, however, owned lines of l.3 meter gauge, with steam traction, on which they used wood fuel. Rio de Ouro, the most important of the Marquez de Valleflor's estates in the islands, had 12 kilometers of line of this kind, connecth1g estate head-quarters with his private wharves. Ubo Budo and Agua Ize, large estates to the south of San Thome town, had similar private lines, each about 6 kilometres long, with steam traction. All three had in addition a network of light Decauville railways, serving all parts of the estates. It was not unusual for an estate to possess from 40 to 75 kilometres of private line.
How far, if at all, the costly State enterprise in railways had been desirable in the general interests of the colony was an open question. General Count de Souza e Faro, a colonial engineer of long experience, who made the requirements of the island his special study, in 1909 published a monograph discussing this project, among other matters. In his opinion, private railways on the Decauville system, such as were to be found on every estate of importance, and the existing coasting service, hitherto found adequate, met all reasonable requirements, and were less costly to the majority of those concerned than State lines. No doubt a few centrally situated estates, such as Monte Cafe, which had no access to the coast and were therefore compelled to send their produce over bad roads by cart or by carrier, found the public service very useful.
As cultivation extended, it seemed probable that the private, rather than the State railway system, would expand to keep pace with it. Radical changes in the management of the latter were necessary, if the confidence of the planting community was not to be forfeited. The leading planters, however, displayed no great eagerness for any large expansion of the present area of cultivation. Nearly half of the island was already under crops, and they feared the deterioration of the soil and climatic conditions consequent upon the extensive forest fellings which would be necessarv if cultivation were extended.
There were post offices at San Thome town and at Santo Antonio do Principe, from which deliveries were made to the inhabitants of the town districts and to the agents of the up-country planters, who fulfilled the functions of a post office by receiving and forwarding their employers' correspondence and papers. The system was very much the same as that adopted in the case of the remoter rubber estates in Ceylon and Malaya. The colony had no internal service of telegraphs open to the public, but the postal telephone service was general all over the island and kept the estates in touch with the business houses and town residents. It was not liable to greater interruptions than were usual in the tropics, though of course storms and landslips often cause damage.
The West African Telegraph Co. had a cable station at San Thome, and employ four Europeans (British), including a superintendent, and about ten native operators. The latter, for the most part, were Sierra Leone Africans, with occasionally an Accra man, and all were British subjects. There were two cable lines connecting the islands with the African mainland, and thence with the rest of the world. One of these ran north from San Thome to Principe, and on by Bonny, Lagos, and other West African ports to St. Vincent in the Cape Verde Islands and to Madeira, terminating at Carcavellos in Portugal. The other line rans south to Loanda, Benguella, and Mossamedes, and thence to Cape Town ; a new branch of this line gave a connexion with Banana. There was for some time no wireless installation in either island, but in the budget estimate for 1917 there was an assignment for this purpoe.
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