SAN THOMfi 25 



The cocoa plantations at San Thome cease at 

 a height of less than 2000 feet, and above that 

 Nature is paramount again. 



When I was at San Thome in the month of 

 July 1920, and again in December of that year, 

 the dread scourge of Phylloxera was upon the 

 island, and nearly one-third of the cocoa plants 

 had been destroyed. On the higher plantations, 

 1500 feet above the sea, the disease had been less 

 virulent, but here moulds, due possibly to excessive 

 rain and constant mists, had taken toll of plant 

 and profit. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, 

 the export of cocoa from San Thome is prodigious, 

 for from little over 100,000 acres of cocoa planta- 

 tion from GO to 80 million pounds of cocoa are 

 shipped every year. 



There is a large number of well-equipped 

 plantations on the island, and Mr. Johnson, the 

 British Vice-Consul, who was kindness itself to me 

 when at San Thome, convinced me that, in the 

 economic as well as the humanitarian aspects of 

 cocoa planting, the Portuguese have little or 

 nothing to learn from any other colonial power. 

 The planters are rich, and their ' roshas " or 

 plantations well equipped with plant for treating 

 the cocoa, while there arc thousands of miles of 

 Decauville railway for its transportation. The 

 native labourers, of whom there are about 30,000 

 at San Thome alone, are well fed, housed, and 

 hospitalized, and appear well treated and content. 



Hound the question of the labour at San 

 Thome and Principe a storm of controversy has 

 . A certain section of the British press some 



