2014英语四级听力练习慢速4.10(2)_大学英语听力

2014英语四级听力练习慢速4.10(2)

　　A Portuguese ship brought the Mende and several hundred other captured Africans to Cuba. Many died of sickness, starvation or beatings on the long trip across the Atlantic Ocean, which was called the Middle Passage. Those who survived were brought to a market in Havana.

　　Cuba was a Spanish colony at the time. Spanish law said slavery was legal on the island, but the slave trade was not. To get around the law, many traders acted as if

　　captured Africans had been living in Cuba as slaves for a long time.

　　For instance, one

　　of the young Mende men was named Sengbe Pieh. Two Cuban middlemen bought him and about 50 other men, women and children for farms on the other side of the island. The middlemen wrote his name in their records as Joseph Cinqu. They gave the other Africans Spanish names, too, so it would seem like the Africans had been born in Cuba.

　　Then they loaded the group onto a ship called the Amistad a name that means Friendship in Spanish and chained them below deck.

　　Historian Howard Jones says the Amistad was like a taxi.

　　It would transport slaves wherever you wanted them to be taken. They werent really slaves, theyd never been enslaved, but they were called that at this point. Thats a critical issue.

　　A few nights later, Sengbe Pieh and some of the other Africans broke free. They found weapons and waited until sunrise. The next morning, Pieh and his shipmates killed the captain of the Amistad and the cook. Two crew members escaped. The Cuban middlemen were the only white people who remained.