of their continent. The generally accepted
theory was that it had somehow mysteriously come by way of the West
Indies, although as yet the Grass had not appeared on any of those
islands, and even Cuba, within sight of the submerged Florida Keys, was
apparently safe behind her protective supercyclone fans. But the fact
the Grass had appeared first at Medellin in Colombia rather than in the
tiny bit of Panama remaining seemed to show it had not come directly
from the daggerpointed mass poised above the continent.

_La Prensa_ of Buenos Aires said in a long editorial entitled "Does
Humanity Betray Itself?": "When the Colossus of the North was evilly
enchanted, many Americans (except possibly our friends across the River
Plate) breathed more easily. Now it would seem their rejoicing was
premature and the doom of the Yankee is also to be the doom of our older
civilization. How did this verdant disease spread from one continent to
another? That is the question which tortures every human heart from the
Antarctic to the Caribbean.

"It is believed the cordon around North America has not been generally
respected. Scientists with the noblest motives, and adventurers urged on
by the basest, are alike believed to have visited the forbidden
continent. It may well be that on one of these trips the seeds of the
gigantic _Cynodon dactylon_ were brought back. It is well known that the
agents of a certain Yankee capitalist have been accustomed to taking off
on mysterious journeys near the very spot now afflicted by the emerald
plague."

It was a dastardly hint and the sort of thing I had long come to look
upon as inseparable from my position. Of all peoples the Latinamericans
have long been known as the most notoriously ungrateful for the work we
did in developing their countries. Why, in some backward parts, the
natives had been content to live by hunting and fishing till we
furnished them with employment and paid them enough so they could buy
salt fish and canned meats. Fortunately _La Prensa_'s innuendo, so
obviously inspired by envy, was not taken up, and attention soon turned
from the insoluble problem of the bridging of the gap to the southward
progress of the weed itself.

From the very first, everyone took for granted the victory of the Grass.
No concerted efforts were made either to confine or to destroy it. The
World Congress to Combat the Grass, far from being inactive, worked
heroically, but it got little cooperation fro