Transport (means of)

In the articles Monte toboggans, Corsa, Palanquin and Hammock we gave some information on the means of conveyance and transport used on this island. To this we wish to add a few further details, taken from the pamphlet Duas Palavras sobre a viação na Ilha da Madeira by Joaquim Maria Fragoso, former director of Public Works of the District General Council (Junta Geral). Although they refer to the year 1905, they are still of particular interest to our subject:

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In the streets of the city of Funchal, and on the roads that are paved like them, the commonest means of conveyance is the ox-drawn car. These cars consist of a body of wicker or wood, with an iron frame that supports an awning or roof from which curtains hang, and it rests on springs fixed to a kind of wooden sledge. It has no wheels and no front carriage, and it is drawn by oxen, which there are of a small breed but remarkably swift.

In front of these oxen walks a boy, whom they call the candeeiro, holding the yoke; and beside the car goes a man who goads the oxen and steers the car, taking hold of it and pulling it to one side or the other. For carrying loads they use corsas (wheelless wooden sledges) or corsões (large corsas), which consist of two parallel timbers joined together, from 1.6 m to 3 m long and 0.50 m wide.

To ease the friction and sliding of the cars and corsas, a cloth soaked in tallow is thrown on the ground in front of the car, which passes over it, leaving the runners of the sledge and the paving of the streets greased, even though a municipal by-law (postura) prohibits the use of tallow. So when a fine rain dampens the paving, it is extremely difficult to walk on it without slipping. Perhaps because of this greasing of the paving, and because of the nature of the stone and the slope of the streets, there is no dust in the city of Funchal, which is one more healthy condition to add to the many that that most gentle climate offers to the “invalids” who go there to recover their health.

In the rest of the island, people generally use the hammock (rede, slung from a pole and carried by two bearers), suspended from a pole that rests on the shoulders of two men. This way of travelling is very expensive, both because of the men’s day wages (three or four take turns to carry one person) and because they must frequently be given something to drink. They do not cover 3 kilometres without stopping at the taverns, which abound all over the island, to drink poncha (a mixture of spirit (aguardente, distilled from sugar cane or wine), water, sugar and lemon peel); and one cannot haggle over tips with those who hold one’s life in their hands. If one day you travel by hammock on the island of Madeira, I urge you to take the greatest care in choosing these men, who are often given to drunkenness and are therefore a real danger, to be added to the many others that these royal roads present.

People also travel on horseback, on garranos or ponies used to these tracks; and in Funchal there are even magnificent horses for hire, which is surprising, since here on the mainland hired horses are generally the most sluggish of beasts.

In Funchal there are already a few wheeled carriages (char-à-bancs), but there are few streets along which these vehicles can travel; and they can only run services to Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’), along the monumental road of which I have already told you.

Above the city of Funchal, at an altitude of 595 metres, stands the church of Our Lady of the Mount (Nossa Senhora do Monte). Around it lie the most beautiful parks, as much for their vegetation, their abundant water and their mild summer temperature as for the lovely panorama to be enjoyed from there. It is the Sintra of

Madeira, with pretty chalets and magnificent hotels that offer visitors every comfort of modern luxury. To go to Madeira and not go to Monte (‘hill’) is, as the saying goes, to go to Rome and not see the Pope.

Between Funchal and Monte there is a railway on which a steam locomotive (with rack and pinion) makes that ascent in ten minutes, on a gradient that reaches 25 per cent. And since I am telling you about the means of transport in Madeira, I shall not fail to mention the so-called Monte carts or baskets, which most visitors use for the descent. They consist of a wicker platform mounted on two wooden runners greased with tallow, with a seat or settee with a back, also of wicker, which holds two or three people. At the front, on each side, two ropes are fastened, held by two men who walk behind and at the sides of the cart, and with these ropes they hold it back and steer it. The two men propel the carts down the slope by resting one foot on the cart and pressing the other against the paved lane (calçada) of the road. They are so skilled at this work, in which gravity serves as the motive force, that they steer the cart expertly and stop it whenever necessary. And so we came down from Monte by Royal Road no. 24 (Estrada Real n.º 24) in five minutes, over a distance of 4 kilometres, reaching a speed of 48 kilometres an hour!

As you see, some of these means of transport are so original that they are a real attraction. Together with the admirable climate of this island, its splendid panoramas and the curiosities of interest to the natural sciences, they do a very great deal to draw foreigners of social standing and wealth there. Give the island, if possible, a complete road system under normal conditions, cross it with railways, drive about it in coupés and victorias, and once the original means of transport it possesses today have entirely disappeared, the Island of Madeira will lose much of its originality.’ (1921). Closely related to the subject of this article is what we have said on page 417 of volume I, under the title Estradas (see Roads).