Ally’s Reviews > The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano > Status Update

“I had the fears of death hourly upon me, and shuddered at the thoughts of meeting the grim king of terrors in the natural state I then was in, and was exceedingly doubtful of a happy eternity if I should die in it… many… began to call on the good God of heaven for his help; and in the time of our utter need he heard us, and against hope or human probability delivered us!”

“I saw many cruel punishments inflicted on the slaves in the short time I stayed here.”

“With a light heart I bade Montserrat farewell, and never had my feet on it since; and with it I bade adieu to… dreadful instruments of torture; adieu to the offensive sight of the violated chastity of the sable females, which has too often accosted my eyes; adieu to oppressions… I wished for a grateful and thankful heart to praise the Lord God on high for all his mercies!”

“And in the midst of my distress, while the dreadful surfs were dashing with unremitting fury among the rocks, I remembered the Lord, though fearful that I was undeserving of forgiveness, and I thought that as he had often delivered he might yet deliver; and, calling to mind the many mercies he had shewn me in times past, they gave me some small hope that he might still help me.”

“Accordingly he signed the manumission that day, so that, before night, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced; and my joy was still heightened by the blessings and prayers of the sable race, particularly the aged, to whom my heart had ever been attached with reverence.”

Listened to George Whitfield preach

“Nor was such usage as this confined to particular places or individuals; for, in all the different islands in which I have been (and I have visited no less than fifteen) the treatment of the slaves was nearly the same... Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity!”

“While I was thus employed by my master I was often a witness to cruelties of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves.”