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. 

I looked up into the man's face, and he pulled his foot down and asked, "Find 
hide like that on your St. Elias bear?" 
I shook my head. "Nor on any other creature of land or sea," I answered 
candidly. The thickness of it, and the length of the hair, puzzled me. 
"That," he said, and said without the slightest hint of impressiveness, "that 
came from a mammoth." 
"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, for I could not forbear the protest of my unbelief. 
"The mammoth, my dear sir, long ago vanished from the earth. We know it once 
existed by the fossil remains we have unearthed, and by a frozen carcass the 
Siberian sun saw fit to melt out from the bosom of a glacier; but we also know 
that no living specimen exists. Our explorers--" 
At this word he broke in impatiently. "Your explorers? Pish! A weakly breed. Let 
us hear no more of them. But tell me, O man, what you may know of the mammoth 
and his ways." 
Beyond contradiction, this was leading to a yarn; so I baited my hook by 
ransacking my memory for whatever data I possessed on the subject in hand. To 
begin with, I emphasized that the animal was prehistoric, and marshaled all my 
facts in support of this. I mentioned the Siberian sandbars that abounded with 
ancient mammoth bones; spoke of the large quantities of fossil ivory purchased 
from the Innuits by the Alaska Commercial Company; and acknowledged having 
myself mined six- and eight-foot tusks from the pay gravel of the Klondike 
creeks. "All fossils," I concluded, "found amidst debris deposited through 
countless ages." 
"I remember when I was a kid," Thomas Stevens sniffed (he had a most confounded 
way of sniffing), "that I saw a petrified watermelon. Hence, though mistaken 
persons sometimes delude themselves into thinking they are really growing or 
eating them, there are no such things as extant watermelons." 
"But the question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was puerile 
and without bearing. "The soil must bring forth vegetable life in lavish 
abundance to support so monstrous creatures. Nowhere in the North is the soil so 
prolific. Ergo, the mammoth cannot exist." 
"I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for you are 
a young man and have traveled little; but, at the same time, I am inclined to 
agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer exists. How do I know? I 
killed the last one with my own right arm." 
Thus spake Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at the dogs 
and bade them quit their unholy howling, and waited. Undoubtedly this liar of 
singular felicity would open his mouth and requite me for my St. Elias bear. 
"It was this way," he at last began, after the appropriate silence had 
intervened. "I was in camp one day--" 
"Where?" I interrupted. 
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the northeast, where stretched a 
terra incognita into which vastness few men have strayed and fewer emerged. "I 
was in camp one day with Klooch. Klooch was as handsome a little kamooks as ever 
whined betwixt the traces or shoved nose into a camp kettle. Her father was a 
full-blood malemute from Russian Pastilik on Bering Sea, and I bred her, and 
with understanding, out of a clean-legged bitch of the Hudson Bay stock. I tell 
you, O man, she was a corker companion. And now, on this day I have in mind, she 
was brought to pup through a pure wild wolf of the woods--gray, and long of 
limb, with big lungs and no end of staying powers. Say! Was there ever the like? 
It was a new breed of dog I had started, and I could look forward to big things. 

 "As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered. I was 
squatting on my hams over the litter--seven sturdy, blind little beggars--when 
from behind came a bray of trumpets and crash of brass. There was a rush, like 
the wind squall that kicks the heels of the rain, and I was midway to my feet 
when knocked flat on my face. At the same instant I heard Klooch sigh, very much 
as a man does when you've planted your fist in his belly. You can stake your 
sack I lay quiet, but I twisted my head around and saw a huge bulk swaying above 
me. Then the blue sky flashed into view and I got to my feet. A hairy mountain 
of flesh was just disappearing in the underbrush on the edge of the open. I 
caught a rear-end glimpse, with a stiff tail, as big in girth as my body, 
standing out straight behind. The next second only a tremendous hole remained in 
the thicket, though I could still hear sounds like a tornado dying quickly away, 
underbrush ripping and tearing, and trees snapping and crashing. 
"I cast about for my rifle. It had been lying on the ground with the muzzle 
against a log; but now the stock was smashed, the barrel out of line, and the 
working gear in a thousand bits. Then I looked for the slut, and--and what do 
you suppose?" 
I shook my head. 
"May my soul burn in a thousand hells if there was anything left of her! Klooch, 
the seven sturdy, blind little beggars--gone, all gone. Where she had stretched 
was a slimy, bloody depression in the soft earth, all of a yard in diameter, and 
around the edges a few scattered hairs." 
I measured three feet on the snow, threw about it a circle, and glanced at 
Nimrod. 
"The beast was 30 long and 20 high," he answered, "and its tusks scaled over six 
times three feet. I couldn't believe, myself, at the time, for all that it had 
just happened. But if my senses had played me, there was the broken gun and the 
hole in the bush. And there was--or, rather, there was not--Klooch and the pups. 
O man, it makes me hot all over now when I think of it. Klooch! Another Eve! The 
mother of a new race! And a rampaging, ranting, old bull mammoth, like a second 
flood, wiping them, root and branch, off the face of the earth! Do you wonder 
that the blood-soaked earth cried out to high God? Or that I grabbed the hand 
axe and took the trail?" 
"The hand axe?" I exclaimed, startled out of myself by the picture. "The hand 
axe, and a big bull mammoth, 30 feet long, 20 feet--" 
Nimrod joined me in my merriment, chuckling gleefully. "Wouldn't it kill you?" 
he cried. "Wasn't it a beaver's dream? Many's the time I've laughed about it 
since, but at the time it was no laughing matter, I was that danged mad, what 
with the gun and Klooch. Think of it, O man! A brand-new, unclassified, 
uncopyrighted breed, and wiped out before it opened its eyes or took out its 
intention papers! Well, so be it. Life's full of disappointments, and rightly 
so. Meat is best after a famine, and a bed softer after a hard trail. 
"As I was saying, I took out after the beast with the hand axe, and clung to its 
heels down the valley; but when he circled back toward the head, I was left 
winded at the lower end. Speaking of grub, I might as well stop long enough to 
explain a couple of points. Up thereabouts, among the mountains, is an almighty 
curious formation. There is no end of little valleys, each like the other much 
as peas in a pod, and all neatly tucked away with straight, rocky walls rising 
on all sides. And at the lower ends are always openings where the drainage or 
glaciers must have broken out. The only way in is through these mouths, and they 
are small, and some smaller than others. As to grub--you've slushed around on 
the rain-soaked islands of the Alaskan coast down Sitka way, most likely, seeing 
as you're a traveler. And you know how stuff grows there--big, juicy, and 
jungly. Well, that's the way it was with those valleys. Thick, rich soil, with 
ferns and grasses and such things in patches higher than your head. Rain three 
days out of four during the summer months; and food in them for a thousand 
mammoths, to say nothing of small game for man. 
"But to get back. Down at the lower end of the valley I got winded and gave 
over. I began to speculate, for when my wind left me my dander got hotter and 
hotter, and I knew I'd never know peace of mind till I dined on mammoth foot. 
And I knew, also, that that stood for skookum mamook pukapuk--excuse Chinook, I 
mean there was a big fight coming. Now the mouth of my valley was very narrow, 
and the walls steep. High up on one side was one of those big pivot rocks, or 
balancing rocks, as some call them, weighing all of a couple hundred tons. Just 
the thing. I hit back for camp, keeping an eye open so the bull couldn't slip 
past, and got my ammunition. It was worthless with the rifle smashed; so I 
opened the shells, planted the powder under the rock, and touched it off with 
slow fuse. Wasn't much of a charge, but the old boulder tilted up lazily and 
dropped down into place, with just space enough to let the creek drain nicely. 
Now I had him." 
"But how did you have him?" I queried. "Who ever heard of a man killing a 
mammoth with a hand axe? And, for that matter, with anything else?" 
"O man, have I not told you I was mad?" Nimrod replied, with a slight 
manifestation of sensitiveness. "Mad clean through, what of Klooch and the gun? 
Also, was I not a hunter? And was this not new and most unusual game? A hand 
axe? Pish! I did not need it. Listen, and you shall hear of a hunt, such as 
might have happened in the youth of the world when caveman rounded up the kill 
with hand axe of stone. Such would have served me well. Now is it not a fact 
that man can outwalk the dog or horse? That he can wear them out with the 
intelligence of his endurance?" 
I nodded. 
"My valley was perhaps five miles around. The mouth was closed. There was no way 
out. A timid beast was that bull mammoth, and I had him at my mercy. I got on 
his heels again, hollered like a fiend, pelted him with cobbles, and raced him 
around the valley three times before I knocked off for supper. Don't you see? A 
racecourse! A man and a mammoth! A hippodrome, with sun, moon, and stars to 
referee! 

"It took me two months to do it, but I did it. And that's no beaver dream. Round 
and round I ran him, me traveling on the inner circle, eating jerked meat and 
salmon berries on the run, and snatching winks of sleep between. Of course, he'd 
get desperate at times and turn. Then I'd head for soft ground where the creek 
spread out, and lay anathema upon him and his ancestry, and dare him to come. 
But he was too wise to bog in a mud puddle. Once he pinned me in against the 
walls, and I crawled back into a deep crevice and waited. Whenever he felt for 
me with his trunk, I'd belt him with the hand axe till he pulled out, shrieking 
fit to split my eardrums, he was that mad. He knew he had me and didn't have me, 
and it near drove him wild. But he was no man's fool. He knew he was safe as 
long as I stayed in the crevice, and he made up his mind to keep me there. And 
he was dead right, only he hadn't figured on the commissary. There was neither 
grub nor water around that spot, so on the face of it he couldn't keep up the 
siege. He'd stand before the opening for hours, keeping an eye on me and 
flapping mosquitoes away with his big blanket ears. Then the thirst would come 
on him and he'd ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every name 
he could lay tongue to. This was to frighten me, of course; and when he thought 
I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away softly and try to make a sneak for 
the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get almost there--only a couple hundred yards 
away it was--when out I'd pop and back he'd come, lumbering along like the old 
landslide he was. After I'd done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he 
changed his tactics. Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of 
warning, away he'd go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and 
back before I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he raised the 
siege and deliberately stalked off to the waterhole. 
"That was the only time he penned me--three days of it--but after that the 
hippodrome never stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six days' 
go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags and tatters, but I 
never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son of earth, with nothing 
but the old hand axe in one hand and a cobble in the other. In fact, I never 
stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As 
for the bull, he got perceptibly thinner and thinner--must have lost several 
tons at least--and nervous as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When 
I'd come up with him and yell, or lam him with a rock at long range, he'd jump 
like a skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail 
and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing, and the 
way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral beast he was, a 
murderer, and a blasphemer. 
"But toward the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a 
baby. His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly mountain of misery. He'd 
get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger around like a drunken man, 
and fall down and bark his shins. And then he'd cry, but always on the run. O 
man, the gods themselves would have wept with him, and you yourself or any other 
man. It was pitiful, and there was so much of it, but I only hardened my heart 
and hit up the pace. At last I wore him clean out, and he lay down, 
broken-winded, brokenhearted, hungry and thirsty. When I found he wouldn't 
budge, I hamstrung him, and spent the better part of the day wading into him 
with the hand axe, he a-sniffing and sobbing till I worked in far enough to shut 
him off. 30 feet long he was, and 20 high, and a man could sling a hammock 
between his tusks and sleep comfortably. Barring the fact that I had run most of 
the juices out of him, he was fair eating, and his four feet, alone, roasted 
whole, would have lasted a man a twelvemonth. I spent the winter there myself." 
"And where is this valley?" I asked. 
He waved his hand in the direction of the northeast, and said: "Your tobacco is 
very good. I carry a fair share of it in my pouch, but I shall carry the 
recollection of it until I die. In token of my appreciation, and in return for 
the moccasins on your own feet, I will present to you these mukluks. They 
commemorate Klooch and the seven blind little beggars. They are also souvenirs 
of the oldest breed of animal on earth, and the youngest, and their chief virtue 
lies in that they will never wear out." 
Having effected the exchange, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, gripped my 
hand good night and wandered off through the snow. Concerning his tale, for 
which I have already disclaimed responsibility, I recommend those of little 
faith to visit the Smithsonian Institute. If they bring the requisite 
credentials and do not come during vacation time, they will undoubtedly gain an 
audience with Professor Dolvidson. The mukluks are in his possession, and he 
will verify, not the manner in which they were obtained, but the material of 
which they are composed. When he states that they are made from the skin of the 
mammoth, the scientific world accepts his verdict. What more would you have? 

        
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