Firewood

The wood burnt as fuel in Funchal and the island’s other main settlements generally comes from the maritime pine, whose logs or split pieces are often sold by the cento (firewood unit of 1,400 sticks) or the talha (firewood unit of 56 sticks). Each cento contains 1400 sticks and each talha 56 sticks; the woodcutters call a cento of 100 sticks a ‘small cento’.

Firewood became enormously more expensive during the war, because of its consumption by coastal steamers and factories. Today a cento of firewood costs six times as much as in 1914, owing to the same causes and to the rise in value of all the produce of the land. An ordinary cento of firewood that cost 12 to 13 escudos (Portuguese currency from 1911, = 1,000 réis) ten years ago now costs between 70 and 80 escudos. (1921) The inhabitants of some parishes go up into the uplands to gather firewood, and they cause great devastation among the trees to obtain the fuel they need for domestic use.