He now made Miss Hasseltine a formal offer of marriage, and she knew that if she accepted she must of course accompany him abroad.  For a time she not unnaturally hesitated.  She was asked to do what no American woman had before attempted, and the life of a foreign missionary seemed full of unknown horrors.  It meant to leave home and probably never to see friends or native land again, to be worn out in the unhealthy climate of some tropical land, to suffer “every kind of want and distress, degradation, insult, persecution, and, perhaps, a violent death.”  Friends, with few exceptions, advised her to decline, and public opinion was strongly opposed to such a “wild, romantic undertaking” as a woman going out to the heathen.  “O Jesus,” she prayed in her perplexity, “direct me, and I am safe; use me in Thy service, and I ask no more.  I would not choose my position of work or place of service; only let me know Thy will, and I will readily comply!”

After some weeks of hesitation she definitely made up her mind.  “I have at length come to the conclusion,” she wrote, on October 28, 1810, “that if nothing in Providence appears to prevent, I must spend my days in a heathen land.  God is my witness that I have not dared to decline this offer that has been made me.”

Her decision surprised many of her acquaintances.  “I hear,” said one lady to another, “that Miss Hasseltine is going to India.  Why does she go?” “Why, she thinks it her duty.  Would you not go if you thought it your duty?” “But,” replied the first speaker emphatically, “I would not think it my duty.”

On February 6, 1812, an ordination service was held at the Tabernacle Church in Salem, when Adoniram Judson and four others were set apart for foreign missionary work.  On the previous day he and Ann Hasseltine had been made man and wife at Bradford; and a few days later Mr. and Mrs. Judson, accompanied by Mr. Newell and his wife, set out in the brig Caravan for Calcutta.

CHAPTER II.

THE ROAD TO RANGOON.

After a four months’ voyage the missionary party reached Calcutta, and there they received a warm welcome from Dr. Carey and his fellow-workers.  They were invited to the missionary headquarters at Serampore, a spot some few miles from Calcutta, in possession of the Danish Government, where the Baptist missionaries resided in order to avoid the interference of the English authorities.  At that time the British rulers of India were opposed to all missionary work, and discouraged it by every means in their power.  Foreign preachers were not allowed to reside in India even for a few weeks, and English missionaries were not suffered to remain unless they could obtain special permission from the East India Company.  The American missionaries had not been many days in India before they discovered this.  They were summoned from Serampore to Calcutta, and there formally commanded, in the name of the Company, to leave India at once and return to America.  To do this would have ruined all their plans, so they asked and obtained permission to go instead to the Isle of France (Mauritius), whither a vessel was about to sail.  But as it would only accommodate Mr. and Mrs. Newell, the Judsons perforce remained in Calcutta waiting for another ship.