_62._ The coming of spring was awaited with grim foreboding, but the Grass was not bound by any manmade almanac and unable to contain itself till the melting of the snow, again leaped the barrier of the Mississippi, this time near Natchez, and ran through the South like water from a sloshed dishpan. The prized reforms of the black legislatures were wiped out more quickly even than their greatgrandfathers' had been in 1877. The wornout cotton and tobacco lands offered hospitable soil while cypress swamps and winter-swollen creeks pumped vitality into the questing runners. Southward and eastward it spread, waiting only the opening of the first pussywillow and the showing of the first crocus to jump northward and meet the western advance there. The dwindling remnants of cohesion and selfcontrol existing before now disappeared completely. The capital was moved to Portland, Maine. Local law and order vanished. The great gangs took over the cities and extracted what tribute they could from the impoverished inhabitants. Utilities ceased functioning entirely, what little goods remained were obtainable only by barter, and epidemic after epidemic decreased the population to fit the shrinking boundaries. Brother Paul, deprived of the radio, now multiplied himself infinitely in the person of his disciples, preaching unremittingly against resistance, even by thought, to the oncoming Grass. Mother Joan's infrequent public appearances attracted enormous crowds as she proclaimed, "O be joyful; give your souls to Jesus and your bodies to the Grass. I am The Forerunner and after me will come the Ox. Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for this is the end of all your suffering and misery." On foot or rarely with the aid of a horse or mule, the panicstricken population marched northward and eastward. Canadian officials, anxious to apply immigration controls with the greatest possible latitude, were thrust aside as though their existence were an irrelevance. Along the lower reaches of the St Lawrence the refugees came like locusts to devour the substance of the _habitants_. Into empty Ungava and almost equally empty Labrador the hardier ones pushed, armed like their forebears with only ax and shotgun. Northward and eastward, beyond the Arctic Circle and onto the polar ice they trickled, seeking some place which promised security from the Grass. Passenger rates to Europe or South America, formerly at a premium, now shot to unparalleled heights.