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September 5 , 2001 Text Version The reading for September 5 includes Perspectives: The Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade, pp.149-195, some of which you will find below. Please read the assignment carefully before the class period.   From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African [The Slave Ship and Its Cargo] The first object that saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. 1 These filled me with astonishment, that was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, and much more the then feelings of my mind when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I was sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too, differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm to me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with the meanest slave in my own country. . . .     1. Captured by slavers along with his sister, Equiano was soon separated from her and sold to different masters over a period of several months before reaching the African coast for shipment to Barbados.             Text and notes taken from The Longman Anthology of British Literature copyright ©1999 by Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc. Site copyright ©2001 Joan Bahamonde, George Justice, and Susan Soto