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 | have a stereo at home. |
clo ble)air ioMlatm Plaliolamallclam linia
aslo) a(n ME=\-| aal-To Me(-INV(lalale)
newspapers—|I know it’s
such a cliché. I've used it
for over 10 years.
Recently, it hasn't been
Wola dale = oma(-1|0m Mriale)¥ lelale,
about replacing it, but even
if | bought the latest,
coolest unit, I'd probably
still miss this one. So |
can't bring myself to buy a
la(-\'\ eo)a(-Fanla ele a\-1 ane)
ge(=)
I'm a wimp.
Tite Kubo

BLEACH is author Tite Kubo’s second title. Kubo made his

debut with ZomBiE POWDER, a four-volume series for WEEKLY
SHONEN JUMP.To date, BLEACH has been translated into numer-
ous languages and has also inspired an animated TV series
that began airing in Japan in 2004. Beginning its serialization
in 2001, BLEACH is still a mainstay in the pages of WEEKLY
SHONEN Jump. In 2005, BLEACH was awarded the prestigious
Shogakukan Manga Award in the shonen (boys’) category.

5=
\
 BLEACH
Vol. 9: FOURTEEN DAYS FOR CONSPIRACY
The SHONEN JUMP Graphic Novel Edition

STORY AND ART BY

TITE KUBO

English Adaptation/Lance Caselman

Translation/Joe Yamazaki
Touch-Up Art & Lettering/Andy Ristaino
Design/Sean Lee
Editor/Kit Fox

Managing Editor/Elizabeth Kawasaki

Director of Production/Noboru Watanabe
Vice President of Publishing/Alvin Lu
Vice President & Editor in Chief/Yumi Hoashi
Sr. Director of Acquisitions/Rika Inouye
Vice President of Sales & Marketing/Liza Coppola
Publisher/Hyoe Narita

BLEACH © 2001 by Tite Kubo. All rights reserved. First published in Japan
in 2001 by SHUEISHA Inc., Tokyo. English translation rights in the United
States of America and Canada arranged by SHUEISHA Inc. The stories,
characters and incidents mentioned in this publication are entirely fictional.

No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Published by VIZ Media, LLC

P.O. Box 77010
San Francisco, CA 94107

SHONEN JUMP Graphic Novel Edition

10987654321
First printing, September 2005

(~~THEWORLD'S
a na ( MOST POPULAR MANGA
PARENTAL ADVISORY
BLEACH is rated T for Teen and is
recommended for ages 13 and up.
This volume contains violence and tobacco use.
www.viz.com. fE |
Oh, all of us dream
That we are Flying the skies
With our eyes open

Shonen Jump Graphic Novel

TARYA
itd
Yoruichi

One fateful night, Ichigo Kurosaki encounters Soul Reaper

Rukia Kuchiki and ends up helping her do her job—which is
cleansing lost souls called Hollows and guiding them to the
Soul Society. Eventually, Ichigo grows powerful and defeats the
behemoth Menos Grande. Now Rukia has been condemned
to death in the Soul Society.To save her, Ichigo, Orihime,
Chad, and Uryd have endured rigorous training. With their
feline guide, Yoruichi, they finally enter the Soul Society. But
do they have what it takes to save Rukia—or themselves?!
cA A Yasutora ml

Uryii Ishida

CTD
LI A
DLLAI
FOURTEEN DAYS FOR CONSPIRACY

Contents
71. INTRUDERZ i
72. The Superchunk 29
73.Ax Storm 49
74.Amputation 69
75. Crimson Rain 89
76. Boarrider Comin’ 109
77.My Name is Ganju 129
78. meeT 'Em iN tHE basemenT 149
79. FOURTEEN DAYS FOR CONSPIRACY 169
11.INTRUDERZ

DISTORTION
OETECTED IN
THE WESTERN
SLUMS!
ALERT REGIONS
THREE
THROUGH
EIGHT!

WHAT'S WV
GOING
ON?!
THEY WERE TAKInG
e A e
BREAk. a a

WET IT’s AN
ALERT!
LET’S
 THEY'RE
CRUMBLING
BEHINO US! WALLS
ARE
COLLAPS-
ING!
 IDIOT!
ALL IT’S THAT
SPIRITUAL STUPIO
ENTITIES! COSTUME
YOU'RE
WEARING!!

IF YOU
SWING THAT
 WA

RUN
Sam! RAS OM
ON MY
WX ] ‘cown,
|
U mas
|
4
ye \
i\\ \ \ \ S
ray \ ¥ *
|
WO

AN
\
APPEARS
ONCE
EVERY KOTOTSu--
SEVEN A
YEARS... CLEANER
"
ws <i fil -
DF: ¢ Wi
[—
KESSHUN!!
(THREE-
GOD
SHIELD)
 WORSE
THAN! |
EXPECTED
 | CAN’T
BELIEVE |
WERE YOU HAVE TO
THINKING!! HAUL OUT
BROUGHT
A SPARE? MY SPARE
CAPE
ALREADY...

SS LUC KIL Y,
HAD IT BEEN
IT WA S ON LY DIO YOU
x
eee S, = THTH
|
EATSE NOT
HEAR A
THEMSELVE
ey
YOU WOULD’VE TOUCHED SINGLE
WORD |
SNATCHED UP - THE SAID?!
ALONG WITH KOTOTSu!
THEM!!
AND YOU’O BE
DEAD!!

WE’O ALL BE
THE DEAD IF SHE
DUST |S HAON’T
DONE WHAT
SET- SHE DID!
TLING!
 IT’S WHERE
SOULS LIVE
WHEN THEY

/ sERENEL:
FIRST COME
TO THE SOUL
SOCIETY.
QUIET
“SPIRT.COURT)

RUKONGAI,
THE
IT LIES ORIFTING
OUTSIDE THE SPIRIT
WALLS OF THE
SEIREITE!
WHERE THE
SOUL
REAPERS LIVE.

IT’S THE
POOREST--
MAJORITY BUT FREEST--
PART OF THE
OF THE SOUL
KONPAKU SOCIETY.
LIVE
THERE.
<iie€
ewos 1 [=
Scans
ee e
fi

f HE] i ;
ee MY j pms ,
Y— =z Z
UN TAY

ol| CtoT (+ P¢ M
a a
_|| HaieisFt

nS 8 A THE TOWN
LOOKS
ii | KS | are y
Wi \)
LOOKS
LS aal

Hl H
ED...
|
ee iT ——

T O T A L L Y || ‘ an ME
“t
ee DIFFERENT
a “al «OVER
“\\ THERE.

| KNOW!
THAT’S
WHERE
THE SOUL
REAPERS
LIVE,
RIGHT?
SRD
ha
 ANYONE
TRIED TO
CRASH THE
SEIREIMON--
THE SPIRIT
GATE--WITH-
OUT A
PERMIT...
WELCOME,
Boy!

27
 wor
0 ).
UMSORRY!! AX.
THE BLADE'S
KINDA
DIRTY.
LUSED IT
TO CHOP
PICKLES.
 72 . T h e S u p e r c h u n k

TH E E V I L

THE
R E I M O N
SEI

IF IT’S
ON THRE
OTHE

ANYTH I N G . . .

THEY'LL
E T O
HAV
DEAL
WITH...
 LyGY;

44,

sn

S,OBNVONIC
*X”
LSula--IC
YAaLOVAVHD
dO
IWYN
eor* qe a2 02402224
¢

THE TOWN
WHERE THE
SOUL
REAPERS
LIVE. RUKIA
IS IN HERE 4 CON'T WE GET
SOME- ANY LINES?

THE BLUE STREAM

GATE (EAST)

THE RED HOLLOW

GATE (SOUTH)

THE WHITE ROAD

GATE (WEST)

JINDANBO

NEWLY ARRIVED SOULS

STAY HERE. ITS
RESIDENTS RARELY
ENTER THE SEIREITE! ICHIGO AND
AND MUST HAVE COMPANY
PERMISSION
TODO SO.
 » HE
CAN’T BE

THIS IS
THE GREAT
WHITE
ROAD
GATE.
AND.
JINDANBO aX
IS... HE WAS ~
CHOSENOUT |
OF ALL THE
GIANTS IN
THE SOUL
SOCIETY FOR
THIS JOB.
 IN THE 300 GATEKEEPER?
YEARS
THAT HE’S STOO WE HAVE
DEFEAT
BEEN HIM TO GET
GUARDING
THIS

NO ONE
HAS EVER
CRASHED
A

HSOUW ARE WE HE
PPOSED
TO DEFEAT | MUST BE
SOMETHING + STRONG
LIKE THAT?

HE CAN
KILL 30
HOLLOWS
WITH ONE
FORMULATE EIHNI E OF
APLAN.
S AX.
HIS
SLTRENGTH |S
EGENDARY.
 ORIHIME!!
CHAD!!
DION'T YOU
HEAR WHAT
| SAID?!
 HE
CRACKED
THE
PAVEMENT
ANDO MADE
IT TILT...

TO ht
FORMA | |
§ BARRIER! |

WASH NUMBER
YOUR ONE...
HANOS E YOU MUST
WHEN . BE FROM
YOU GO THE
=< COUNTRY.

TWO...

DON'T
EAT
THINGS
OFF THE
FLOOR.
 THE REST THE BOY

YOU COME YOU

OFWAIT WITH THE
TOTHE |! patientty |. | CRANCE
HAIR GOT
CITY, YOU UNTIL I'VE
HAVE TO SMASHED: |. HERE
FOLLOW : Fl RST,
THE SO I'LL
RULES. FIGHT

WHEN | DO,
SHOOT
TSUBAKI
THROUGH
THE HOLE
AT THAT
 READ
< THIS
WAY

WHO’S
TSUBAKI?

CHAD, HEY...
ORIHIME
eee

ICHIGO
HEY, 7!
ORIHIME...

JUST STAY YOu

THERE ANDO ANO
DON'T CO CHAD...
ANYTHING,
OKAY?
 | DON’T KNOW YOU SAW
WHAT KINO OF THAT
TRAINING YOU
YOU CAN'T WENT GIANT'S
POSSIBLY THROUGH THE STRENGTH
STOP BEAT PAST TEN u
HIM BY DAYS, BUT...
YELLING. YOURSELF!

| DION’T
"MIN NO KNOW YOu
MOOD FOR I'VE BEEN WERE
YOUR WITH YOU THERE,
STUPIDITY, ALL
ICHIGO!!
 | THINK

YOU SAID
YOURSELF
YOU DON'T
KNOW WHAT
KINO OF
TRAINING
| WENT
THROUGH. /\\'

BUT I'LL
TELL YOU
 ANDO THE AT FIRST, THE
PLAN WAS TO
OTHER USE THE ENTIRE
FIVE TEN DAYS TO
REGAIN MY SOUL
REAPER
POWERS.

TAUGHT YOU
FOR FIVE
HAT-ANO-
THE SECRETS CLOGS, DAYS
OF COMBAT... ONE-ON-

ONE!
SAS
HE
WOULDN'T
TEACH ME
ANYTHING.

| GAINED
STAMINA
 YOu
HAVE
BAD
MANNERS.
 IF
| SOMEBODY
WAITS FOR
you!!!
 THE CRUCIAL
THI ICHIGO GOT
ASA SOUL NW FROM THAT
y REAPER, HE . GUY WAS

ANO ICHIGO EXTRAORD- J TANT...

Kk DOESN'T." CONTROL INARY (We?
THEM. SPIRITUAL va

EXPERI-
 HE'D BE
INCRED-
IBLY
STRONG

YOU
ATTACKED

THAT BAD
MANNERS
TOO?
744),
73. Ax Storm
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 A wood-burning heating stove common
throughout Alaska and the Yukon is made from a
gasoline tank turned on its side and fitted with legs of
iron pipe.
We have other live stock on board. Down in the hold are eight
hundred chickens bound for the hen fanciers of interior Alaska. They
crow night and morning, and with the baaing of the sheep and the
mooing of the cattle we seem to be in a floating barnyard. The barge
is swung this way and that, and whenever it touches the bank, the
sheep pile up one over the other, some of the cattle are thrown from
their feet, and the chickens cackle in protest.
The Selkirk burns wood, and we stop several times a day to take
on fuel, which is wheeled to the steamer in barrows over a
gangplank from the piles of cord wood stacked up on the banks. At
many of the stops the only dwelling we see is the cabin of the wood
chopper, who supplies fuel for a few dollars a cord. The purser
measures with a ten-foot pole the amount in each pile loaded on
board. Going down stream the Selkirk burns about one cord an hour,
and in coming back against the current the consumption is often four
times as much. The wood is largely from spruce trees from three to
six inches in diameter. Many of the little islands we pass are covered
with the stumps of trees cut for the steamers, but most of the wood
stations are on the mainland, the cutting having been done along the
banks or in the valleys back from the river.
Except where we take on fuel there are no settlements on the
Yukon between White Horse and Dawson. The country is much the
same as it was when the cave dwellers, the ancestors of the
Eskimos, wrought with their tools of stone. For a distance of four
hundred and sixty miles we do not see a half dozen people at any
stop of the steamer, although here and there are deserted camps
with the abandoned cabins of prospectors and wood choppers. One
such is at Chisana, near the mouth of the White River. The town was
built during the rush to the Chisana gold mines, and it was for a time
a thriving village, with a government telegraph office, a two-story
hotel, and a log stable that could accommodate a dozen horses and
numerous sled dogs. The White Pass and Yukon Company built the
hotel and the stable, expecting to bring the miners in by its steamers
and to send them into the interior with horses and dogs. It did a good
business until the gold bubble burst and the camp “busted.” To-day
the Chisana Hotel is deserted, all the cabins except that of the wood
chopper are empty, and under the wires leading into one of them is a
notice: “Government telegraph, closed August 3, 1914.”
 The woodman’s cabin is open. A horseshoe is nailed over the
door and a rifle stands on the porch at the side. On the wall at the
back of the hut a dog harness hangs on a peg. The skin of a freshly
killed bear is tacked up on one side, and bits of rabbit skins lie here
and there on the ground. The cabin itself is not more than eight feet
in height. It is made of logs, well chinked with mud and with earth
banked up about the foundation. There is a weather-strip of bagging
nailed to the door posts. The door is a framework filled in with pieces
of wooden packing boxes for panels.
Entering, we find that there are two rooms. One is a kitchen, and
the other a living room and bedroom combined. Three cots, made of
poles and covered with blankets, form the beds. There are some
benches for seats and a rude table stands under the window.
Various articles of clothing hang from the walls or lie upon the floor.
In the kitchen a table is covered with unwashed dishes. There is a
guitar on the shelf near the stove and a pack of cards on a ledge in
the logs. The whole is by no means inviting, but I doubt not it is a fair
type of the home of the prospectors and woodsmen throughout this
whole region.
I have seen most of the great rivers of the world—the Rhine, the
Danube, the Volga, the Nile, the Zambesi, the Yangtse, and the
Hoang Ho. I know the Hudson, the Mississippi, the Ganges, the
Indus, and the Irrawaddy, as well as the Amazon and the Parana,
and many other streams of more or less fame. But nowhere else
have I seen scenery like that along the Yukon. We seem to have
joined the army of early explorers and to be steaming through a new
world. We pass places

Where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where.

Much of the country is semi-desert, but some of it is as green as the

valley of the Nile. In places the hills, sloping almost precipitously
back from the river, are wrinkled with dry waterways filled with
scrubby forests. In others there are series of ledges rising one over
the other, making great terraces from the edge of the stream to the
tops of the mountains.
The Yukon changes its course like the Yellow River of China.
Now we pass through gorges of silt where the sand walls rise above
us to the height of a twenty-story office building; and now swing
around beds where we seem to be walled in by the cuttings made by
the water. The hills are composed of earth washings, and from year
to year the snaggy teeth of old Father Time have been gouging long
furrows out of their sides. These furrows have caught the moisture,
forests of small evergreens have grown up in them, and the
landscape for miles looks as though it had been ploughed by the
gods and drilled in with these crops of green trees. This makes the
country, when seen from a distance, seem to be cultivated. There is
a scanty grass between the patches of forests, and the whole is like
a mighty farm planted by the genii of the Far North.
As we go down the river the scenery changes. Here the banks
are almost flat and are covered with bushes. There on the opposite
side they are of a sandy glacial alluvial formation, perfectly bare. At
times the soil is so friable that it rolls down in avalanches, and a blast
from our steam whistle starts the sand flowing. It makes one think of
the loess cliffs on the plains of North China. Those cliffs contain
some of the richest fertilizing matter on earth, and their dust, carried
by the wind, enriches the country upon which it drops as the silt from
the Abyssinian highlands enriches the Nile Valley.
The soil from the upper Yukon, on the other hand, is poorer than
that which surrounds the Dead Sea at the lower end of the Jordan. It
lacks fertilizing qualities, and some of it rests on a bed of prehistoric
ice, which carries off the rainfall, leaving no moisture for plant life. A
geological expert in our party says it is as though the land were laid
down on plates of smooth copper tilted toward the valleys to carry
the rain straight to the rivers. He tells me that the region has only ten
or twelve inches of water a year, or a rainfall similar to that of
California in the neighbourhood of Los Angeles. He says also that
sixty-five per cent. of the water that falls finds its way to the streams.
 The upper Yukon River in places is only a few
hundred feet from bank to bank, and in others as wide
as a lake. Throughout most of its length it is dotted
with islands in all stages of formation.
 The Yukon twists and turns in great loops and
curves throughout its entire length, and at Five Finger
Rapids presents a stretch of water that can be
navigated only by the exercise of the utmost skill in
piloting.
 Much of our way down the Yukon is in and out among islands.
The stream is continually building up and tearing down the land
through which it flows, and the islands are in every stage of
formation. Here they are sand bars as bare as the desert of Sahara;
there they are dusted with the green of their first vegetation. A little
farther on are patches of land with bushes as high as your waist, and
farther still are islands covered with forest. Each island has its own
shade of green, from the fresh hue of the sprouts of a wheatfield to
the dark green mixed with silver that is common in the woods of
Norway and Sweden. Not a few of the islands are spotted with
flowers. Some from which the trees have been cut are covered with
fireweed, and a huge quilt of delicate pink rises out of the water, the
black stumps upon it standing out like knots on the surface. Such
islands are more gorgeous than the flower beds of Holland.
In places the Yukon is bordered by low hills, behind which are
mountains covered with grass, and, still farther on, peaks clad in
their silvery garments of perpetual snow. At one place far back from
the river, rising out of a park of the greenest of green, are rocky
formations that look like castles, as clean cut and symmetrical as
any to be seen on the banks of the Rhine. Down in the river itself are
other great rocks, more dangerous than that on which the Lorelei sat
and with her singing lured the sailors on to their destruction.
One such formation is known as the “Five Fingers.” It consists of
five mighty masses of reddish-brown rock that rise to the height of a
six-story building directly in the channel through which the steamers
must go. The current is swift and the ship needs careful piloting to
keep it from being dashed to pieces against the great rocks. The
captain guides the barge of cattle to the centre of the channel. He
puts the barge and the steamer in the very heart of the current and
we shoot with a rush between two of these mighty fingers of rock
down into the rapids below. As we pass, it seems as though the
rocks are not more than three feet away on each side of our
steamer.
A little farther on we ride under precipices of sand that extend
straight up from the water as though they were cut by a knife, with
strata as regular as those of a layer cake. They seem to be made of
volcanic ash or glacial clay. They rise to the height of the Washington
Monument and are absolutely bare of vegetation, save for the lean
spruce and pine on the tops.
We pass the “Five Fingers” between one and two o’clock in the
morning, when the sun is just rising. This is the land of the midnight
sun, and there are places not far from here where on one or two
days of the year the sun does not sink below the horizon. Even here,
at midnight it is hard to tell sunrise from sunset. There is a long
twilight, and the glories of the rising and the setting sun seem almost
commingled. At times it has been light until one o’clock in the
morning, and I have been able to make notes at midnight at my
cabin windows.
There is a vast difference between this region and the rainy
districts near the Pacific coast. We have left the wet lands, and we
are now in the dry belt of the great Yukon Valley. The air here is as
clear as that of Colorado. The sky is deep blue, the clouds hug the
horizon, and we seem to be on the very roof of the world, with the
“deep deathlike valleys below.” We are in the country of Robert
Service, the poet of the Yukon, and some of his verses come to our
minds:

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.
 CHAPTER XXXIII
THE CAPITAL OF THE YUKON

I write of Dawson, the capital of Yukon Territory, the metropolis of

the Klondike, and for years the richest mining camp of the world. In
the height of its glory it had more than thirty thousand inhabitants,
and in the region about there have been more than sixty thousand
people. To-day the population of the town is less than one thousand.
With the gradual exhaustion of the gold the population is decreasing,
and it may be only a question of years when the precious metal will
all have been taken from the ground and the chief reason for a city
here will have disappeared. One of the great hopes of the people is
in the discovery of rich quartz mines or the mother lode from which
all the loose gold came. The hills have been prospected in every
direction, but so far no such find has been made.
Dawson lies just where it was located when gold was
discovered. The houses still stand on the banks of the Klondike and
Yukon rivers where the two streams meet. The town is laid out like a
checkerboard, with its streets crossing one another at right angles.
They climb the sides of the hills and extend far up the Klondike to the
beginning of the mountains of gravel built up by the dredgers. The
public roads are smooth, and the traffic includes automobiles and
heavy draft wagons. There are more than fifty automobiles in use,
and two hundred and fifty-five miles of good country highways have
been made by the government in the valleys near by.
Dawson has been burned down several times since the great
gold rush, and vacant lots covered with the charred remains of
buildings are still to be seen. Most of the stores are of one story, and
log cabins of all sizes are interspersed with frame houses as
comfortable as those in the larger towns of the States. Scores of the
homes have little gardens about them, and not a few have
hothouses in which vegetables and flowers are raised under glass.
Empty houses and boarded-up stores here and there show the
decline in population.
This is the seat of government of Yukon Territory and the district
headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Here the
judges hold court, and here the commissioner has his residence.
The government house is a large yellow frame building with a wide
porch. In front of it is a beautiful lawn, and beds of pansies border
the walk that leads to the entrance. At the rear are gardens filled in
summer with the most delicious vegetables grown in the Yukon, and
near by are the hothouses that supply the tomatoes and cucumbers
for the commissioner’s table.
Yukon Territory is next door to Alaska, and its resources and
other characteristics are so similar that it might be called Canadian
Alaska. Its southern boundary is within thirty miles of the Pacific
Ocean, and the territory extends to the Arctic. It is a thousand miles
long and in places three hundred miles wide, and it comprises
almost as much land as France. It is one third the size of Alaska
from which it is separated by the international boundary, which
crosses the Yukon River about one hundred miles from here.
The Dawson of to-day has none of the earmarks of the Dawson
of the past. It has now several churches, a city library, radio
concerts, women’s clubs, sewing societies, and afternoon teas. The
palatial bars where beer cost three dollars a bottle and champagne
twenty dollars a pint have long since disappeared. The hymns of the
Salvation Army have taken the place of the songs of the dance halls,
and in the hotel where I am staying is a Christian Science lecturer
who is drawing large crowds.
The order on the streets is as good as that of any town in New
England, and educationally and socially the place is the equal of any
of its size in the States. There is still a large proportion of miners, but
most of them are connected with the great dredging and hydraulic
operations, and the independent prospectors are few. There are
many business men and officials, as well as lawyers and doctors.
Now and then Indians come in to sell their furs to the traders. The
stores have large stocks of goods and handle most of the trade of
the Yukon and some of that of eastern Alaska.
For the first few years after gold was discovered in the Klondike
everything was paid for in gold dust or nuggets, and the store-
keepers had their gold scales, upon which they weighed out the
price of their goods. Every miner then carried a gold poke, and paid
for a cigar or a drink with a pinch of dust. To-day the only place
where one can use any coin less than a quarter is at the post-office,
and there the change is in stamps.
Visiting a grocery store, I saw cantaloupes selling at seventy-five
cents apiece, chickens at three dollars, and eggs at a dollar a dozen.
These are the summer prices. In the heart of midwinter, when the
hens go on a strike, eggs soar to five dollars a dozen. In early days
they sometimes sold for eighteen dollars, and were cheap at one
dollar apiece. In a butcher shop hard by I saw salmon that had been
brought seventeen hundred miles up the Yukon, and the finest of
porterhouse steaks. As I have said, the beef has to be brought in
from southern Canada or the States, and the freight rates are so
high that the butchers cannot afford to import skinny animals.
Indeed, I am told that the transportation charges are quite as much
as the first cost of the meat.
“All game here is cheap,” said a butcher I talked with. “We sell
moose and caribou steaks and roasts at twenty or twenty-five cents
a pound. As to bear, the people won’t eat it; it is too tough. In the
winter we have plenty of caribou. The Indians kill deer in great
numbers and bring in the hind quarters, peddling them about from
house to house. The fore parts of the animals they feed to their
dogs. This country is also full of grouse and ptarmigan, and any one
can get game in the winter if he will go out and hunt for it.”
The commissioner of the territory tells me that the Yukon is one
of the best big game regions of the North American continent. All
shooting is restricted and licensed, and, so far, there is no indication
of the animals dying out. There is an abundance of moose, mountain
sheep, and mountain goats, and ten thousand caribou may
sometimes be seen moving together over the country. Such a drove
will not turn aside for anything. One can go moose hunting in an
automobile within twenty-five miles of Dawson. The moose are
among the largest of the world. Their horns have often a spread of
five or six feet, and it is not uncommon to kill caribou with antlers
having more than thirty points.
At a drug store I paid a quarter for a bottle of pop. The proprietor,
a pioneer gold miner, had a store in Pittsburgh before he came to
hunt for gold in the Klondike. He did fairly well mining, but decided
there was more money in drugs.
“My prices are small, compared with what I got when I first
started business,” he said. “I used to charge a dollar for a mustard
plaster, a dollar for a two-grain quinine pill, and fifty cents an ounce
for castor oil. I sold my Seidlitz powders at a dollar apiece, and
flaxseed for thirty-two dollars a pound. The latter was used largely to
make a tea for coughs and colds. I remember a cheechako, or
tenderfoot, who came in during those days. He asked me for ten
cents’ worth of insect powder. I looked him over and said: ‘Ten cents!
Why man, I wouldn’t wrap the stuff up for ten cents.’ The cheechako
turned about and replied: ‘You needn’t wrap it up, stranger; just pour
it down the back of my neck.’”
Speaking of the old-time prices, I hear stories everywhere as to
the enormous cost of things in the days of the gold rush. All tinned
vegetables were sold at five dollars a can, and a can of meats cost a
third of an ounce of gold dust or nuggets. At one time, the usual
price of all sorts of supplies and provisions was one dollar a pound.
One man tells me he bought an eight-hundred-pound outfit in
Dawson for eight hundred dollars. It consisted of provisions and
supplies of all kinds, shovels and nails costing the same as corn
meal and rice. At that time flour sold for fifty dollars a sack, firewood
for forty dollars a cord, and hay for from five hundred to eight
hundred dollars a ton.
 Many who live in Dawson in winter spend their
summers in little cabins in the country or on the
islands in the river. Some of them grow flowers and
vegetables for the Dawson market in gardens along
the river.
 Though not many degrees south of the Arctic
Circle, the official residence of the Commissioner of
Yukon Territory has in summer green lawns, shade
trees, and beds of flowers that thrive in the long hours
of sunlight.
 Dawson is so far north on the globe that some
days in midsummer have only one hour of darkness.
This photograph of Mr. Carpenter and a miner’s pet
bear was taken after ten o’clock at night.
I heard last night of Jack McQuestion, who had a log cabin store
at Forty Mile, a camp on the Yukon. One day a miner came in and
asked for a needle. He was handed one and told that the price was
seventy-five cents. The man took the needle between his thumb and
finger, looked hard at it, and then said to McQuestion:
“Say, pard, ain’t you mistaken? Can’t you make it a bit cheaper?
That’s an awful price for a needle.”
“No,” said the storekeeper, “I’d like to if I could, but great snakes,
man, just think of the freight!”
Another story is told of a miner who wanted to buy some sulphur.
The price asked was five dollars a pound.
“Why man,” said he, “I only paid five cents a pound for it in
Seattle last month.”
“Yes, and you can get it for nothing in hell,” was the reply.
Here in Dawson the days are now so long that I can read out-of-
doors at any time during the twenty-four hours. I can take pictures at
midnight by giving a slight time exposure, and in the latter part of
June one can make snapshots at one in the morning. It is not difficult
to get excellent photographs between nine and eleven P. M. and at
any time after two o’clock in the morning. The sun now sets at about
eleven P. M. and comes up again about two hours later. The twilight
is bright and at midnight the sky is red. Last night I saw a football
match that did not end until after ten o’clock, and moving pictures
were taken near the close of the game.
I find that the light has a strange effect upon me. The sleepiness
that comes about bedtime at home is absent, and I often work or talk
until midnight or later without realizing the hour. The air is
invigorating, the long hours of light seem life-giving, and I do not
seem to need as much sleep as at home.
The weather just now is about as warm as it is in the States. The
grass is green, the trees are in full leaf, there are flowers
everywhere, and the people are going about in light clothing. The
women go out in the evening with bare arms and necks, and the
men play football, baseball, and tennis in their shirt sleeves. There
are many bare-footed children, and all nature is thriving under the
hot twenty-two-hour sun of the Arctic.
 Many people here declare that they like the winters better than
the summers, and that they all—men, women, and children—thrive
on the cold. The pilot of the boat on which I came in from White
Horse tells me he would rather spend a winter on the Upper Yukon
than at his old home in Missouri. He says that one needs heavy
woollen clothing and felt shoes or moccasins. When the
thermometer falls to fifty or sixty degrees below zero he has to be
careful of his face, and especially his nose. If it is not covered it will
freeze in a few minutes. At twenty degrees below zero the climate is
delightful. The air is still and dry, and the people take short walks
without overcoats. At this temperature one needs a fur coat only
when riding. Cows and horses are kept in warmed stables and get
along very well. Horses are seldom used when the thermometer is
fifty degrees below zero. At that temperature the cold seems to burn
out their lungs. Still, it is said that there are horses that are wintered
in the open near Dawson. They have been turned out in the fall to
shift for themselves and have come back in the spring “hog fat.”
The old timers here tell me that the dreariness of the long nights
of the winter has been greatly exaggerated. During that season most
of the earth is snow-clad, and the light of the sky, the stars, and the
moon reflected from the snow makes it so that one can work outside
almost all the time. True, it is necessary to have lights in the schools,
and in the newspaper offices the electricity is turned off only between
11:15 in the morning and 2:15 in the afternoon. The morning
newspaper men who sleep in the day do not see the sun except
upon Sunday.
In the coldest part of the winter the snow makes travelling
difficult. It is then so dry that the dogs pulling the sleds have to work
as hard as though they were going through sand. In March and April
the snow is not so powdery and sleighing is easier. The ideal winter
weather is when the thermometer registers fifteen or twenty-five
degrees below zero, with a few hours of sunlight. The most
depressing time is from the middle of December until the end of the
first week in January. Then comes the most severe cold, and the sun
may not be seen at all.
 It is this midwinter period that is described in many of the
gruesome poems of the Yukon, especially in Service’s “Cremation of
Sam McGee.” You remember how Sam McGee left his home in
sunny Tennessee to roam around the North Pole, where:

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him
like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d sooner live
in hell.

The poet describes how Sam froze to death on the trail above
Dawson and how, before he died, he made his partner promise to
“cremate his last remains.” This was done, between here and White
Horse, on the “marge of Lake Lebarge.” There the frozen corpse was
stuffed into the furnace of the derelict steamer Alice May and a great
fire built. Sam McGee’s partner describes “how the heavens scowled
and the huskies howled, and the winds began to blow,” and how,
“though he was sick with dread, he bravely said: I’ll just take a peep
inside.’” He then opens the furnace door:

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the
furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said:
“Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and
storm——.
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve
been warm.”
 Yukon Territory is said to have thirty-eight million
acres of land that can be utilized for crops or grazing.
Above the Arctic Circle red-top grass, which is used
as hay, grows almost as high as a man.
 Land on the upper Yukon will yield six or seven
tons of potatoes an acre. Sometimes prices are so
high that one crop from this seventeen-acre field has
brought in ten thousand dollars.