2G2 History of Methodism 



his new work, by the special training to which he 

 had been subjected the preceding year 1788, on the 

 French Broad Mission. In that rude and semi-bar- 

 barous region, four years before the territory west of 

 the Blue Ridge was erected into the county of Bun- 

 combe — in the midst of a population scattered in their 

 settlements along the banks of the streams and in the 

 coves of the mountains, not a few of whom were as hos- 

 tile to ministers of the gospel as the Indians were to 

 the whites — he faced dangers and endured hardships 

 scarcely credible by those who have been reared in 

 the silver age of Methodism. He was often forced to 

 subsist solely on cucumbers, or a piece of cold bread, 

 without the luxury of a bowl of milk or a cup of cof- 

 fee. His ordinary diet was fried bacon and corn- 

 bread; his bed, not the swinging hammock, but the 

 clapboard laid on poles supported by rude forks driv- 

 en into the earthen floor of a log-cabin. A safe guide 

 was necessary to direct his devious footsteps from set- 

 tlement to settlement through the deep forest, and a 

 trusty body-guard to protect his life from the deadly 

 assault of the lurking Indian. 



The attempt made in the county of Rutherford, in 

 1789, to - overthrow and destroy by persecution the 

 man who had passed life amid scenes like these re- 

 sembled the movement of the feeble wind to upheave 

 the sturdy oak whose firmness and strength have been 

 developed by the violence of a hundred storms. A 

 ■ruffian band of men, headed by one Perminter Mor- 

 gan — a Baptist preacher — seized Daniel Asbury and 

 hurried him for trial before Jonathan Hampton, a 

 worthy justice of the peace and a gentleman of intel- 

 ligence. " What crime has be^en committed by Mr. 

 Asbury," said the just and prudent magistrate, "that 



