A Relic of the Pliocene
by Jack London
Editor’s Notes by Blake Linton Wilfong Mammoths were huge, hairy, elephant-like mammals that inhabited cold regions of Earth from 4 million to 10,000 years ago. These beasts were ideally suited for the Ice Age, and cave paintings from that period depict prehistoric men hunting them for food. Today, the fossil remains of mammoths are commonplace in Alaska, often unearthed as prospectors pan gravel for gold. Well preserved frozen bodies of mammoths have also been found in Siberia.
Jack London based his story “A Relic of the Pliocene”, published in 1901, upon these and other findings of the science of paleontology. But as is common in science fiction, he (or at least his character Thomas Stevens) exaggerated the facts slightly to make the story more exciting.
The American mammoth (Mammuthus imperator), the largest known species, reached a height of “only” 14 feet.
I have illustrated “A Relic of the Pliocene” with artists’
conceptions of mammoths. These, along with Jack London’s own colorful characterizations and sparkling humor, round out this amusing yarn of modern man pitted against prehistoric monster.
I wash my hands of him at the start. I cannot father his tales, nor will I be responsible for them. I make these preliminary reservations, observe, to guard my own integrity. I possess a certain definite position in a small way, also a wife; and for the good name of the community that honors my existence with its approval, and for the sake of her posterity and mine, I cannot take the chances I once did, nor foster probabilities with the careless improvidence of youth.
So, I repeat, I wash my hands of him, this Nimrod, this mighty hunter, this homely, blue-eyed, freckle-faced Thomas Stevens.
Having been honest to myself, and to whatever prospective olive branches my wife may be pleased to tender me, I can now afford to be generous. I shall not criticize the tales Thomas Stevens told me, and, further, I shall withhold judgment. If asked why, I can only add that judment I have none. Long have I pondered, weighed, and balanced, but never have my conclusions been twice the same—forsooth! because Thomas Stevens is a greater man than I. If he has told truths, well and good; if untruths, still well and good. For who can prove? Or disprove? I eliminate myself from the proposition, while those of little faith may do as I have done—go find the said Thomas Stevens, and discuss to his face the various matters which, if fortune serve, I shall relate. As to where he may be found? The directions are simple: anywhere between 53 north latitude and the Pole, on the one hand; and, on the other, the likeliest hunting grounds that lie between the east coast of Siberia and the farthermost Labrador. That he is there, somewhere, within that clearly defined territory, I pledge the word of an honorable man whose expectations entail straight speaking and right living.
Thomas Stevens may have toyed prodigiously with truth, but when we first met (it were well to mark this point), he wandered into my camp when I thought myself a thousand miles beyond the outermost post of civilization. At the sight of his human face, the first in weary months, I could have sprung forward and folded him in my arms (and I am not by any means a demonstrative man); but to him his visit seemed the most casual thing under the sun. He just strolled into the light of my camp, passed the time of day after the custom of men on beaten trails, threw my snowshoes the one way and a couple of dogs the other, and so made room for himself by the fire. Said he’d just dropped in to borrow a pinch of soda and see if I had any decent tobacco. He plucked forth an ancient pipe, loaded it with painstaking care, and, without as much as a by your leave, whacked half the tobacco of my pouch into his. Yes, the stuff was fairly good.
He sighed with the contentment of the just, and literally absorbed the smoke from the crisping yellow flakes, and it did my smoker’s heart good to behold him.
Hunter? Trapper? Prospector? He shrugged his shoulders No; just sort of knocking about. Had come up from the Great Slave some time since, and was thinking of trapesing over into the Yukon. The Factor of Koshim had spoken about the discoveries on the Klondike, and he was of a mind to run over for a peep. I noticed that he spoke of the Klondike in the archaic vernacular, calling it the Reindeer River—a conceited custom the Old Timers employ against the chechaquos and all tenderfeet in general. But he did it so naively and as such a matter of course that there was no sting, and I forgave him. He also had it in view, he said, before he crossed the divide into the Yukon, to make a little run up Fort o’ Good Hope way.
Now Fort o’ Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and beyond the Circle, in a place where the feet of few men have trod; and when a nondescript ragamuffin comes in out of the night, from nowhere in particular, to sit by one’s fire and discourse on such in terms of “trapesing” and “a little run”, it is fair time to rouse up and shake off the dream. Wherefore I looked about; saw the fly, and, underneath, the pine boughs spread for the sleeping furs; saw the grub sacks, the camera, the frosty breaths of the dogs circling on the edge of the light; and, above, a great streamer of the aurora bridging the zenith from southeast to northwest. I shivered. There is a magic in the northland night, that steals in on one like fevers from malarial marshes. You are clutched and downed before you are aware. Then I looked to the snowshoes, lying prone and crossed where he had flung them. Also I had an eye on my tobacco pouch. Half, at least, of its goodly store had vamoosed. That settled it. Fancy had not tricked me after all.
Crazed with suffering, I thought, looking steadfastly at the man—one of those wild stampeders, strayed far from his bearings and wandering like a lost soul through great vastnesses and unknown deeps. Oh well, let his moods slip on, until, mayhap, he gathers his tangled wits together. Who knows?—the mere sound of a fellow creature’s voice may bring all straight again.
So I led him on in talk, and soon I marveled, for he talked of game and the ways thereof. He had killed the Siberian wolf of westernmost Alaska, and the chamois in the secret Rockies. He averred he knew the haunts where the last buffalo still roamed; that he had hung on the flanks of the caribou when they ran by the hundred thousand, and slept in the Great Barrens on the musk ox’s winter trail.
And I shifted my judgment accordingly (the first revision, but by no account the last), and deemed him a monumental effigy of truth. Why it was I know not, but the spirit moved me to repeat a tale told me by a man who had dwelt in the land too long to know better. It was of the great bear that hugs the steep slopes of St. Elias, never descending to the levels of the gentler inclines. Now God so constituted this creature for its hillside habitat that the legs of one side are all of a foot longer than those of the other. This is mighty convenient, as will be readily admitted. So I hunted this rare beast in my own name, told it in the first person, present tense, painted the requisite locale, gave it the necessary garnishings and touches of verisimilitude, and looked to see the man stunned by the recital.
Not he. Had he doubted, I could have forgiven him. Had he objected, denying the dangers of such a hunt by virtue of the animal’s inability to turn about and go the other way, I could have taken him by the hand for the true sportsman he was.
Not he. He sniffed, looked at me, and sniffed again; then gave my tobacco due praise, thrust one foot into my lap, and bade me examine the gear. It was a mukluk of the Innuit pattern, sewn together with sinew threads, and devoid of beads or furbelows. But it was the skin itself that was remarkable. In that it was all of half an inch thick, it reminded me of walrus hide; but there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so marvelous a growth of hair. On the side and ankles this hair was well-nigh worn away, from friction with underbrush and snow; but around the top and down the more sheltered back it was coarse, dirty black, and very thick. I parted it with difficulty and looked beneath for the fine fur that is common with northern animals, but found it in this case to be absent. This however, was compensated for by the length. Indeed, the tufts that had survived wear and tear measured all of seven or eight inches.