“A Relic of the Pleistocene” (Collier’s Weekly, January 12, 1901) by Jack London is an odd tale of the Northern trails. Inspired by the discovery of a frozen mammoth carcass near the Berezovka River in Siberia in 1900, London’s tale has a prospector find a living specimen. H. G. Wells’s “Aepyornis Island” (Pall Mall Budget, December 27, 1894) gives stories of this sort its structure: with a man finding a relic of the past with disastrous consequences. Jack London wrote a number of Science Fiction stories though his fame lies with tales of the Klondike. In this case, he has written both. (The story was reprinted in Fantasy & Science Fiction (May 1959) and Venture UK (October 1964) as “The Angry Mammoth”. Not sure why the title change.)
The tale begins with the author claiming immunity from any loss of reputation for the story. That out of the way, he tells how an unnamed hunter, who he calls only Nimrod after the biblical character, came into his camp in the North. The man helps himself to tobacco before listening to the author’s tall tale of the St. Elias bear. This creature lives on a mountainside and has one set of legs shorter than the other. Because of this, it can’t turn around.
Nimrod is not impressed. He shows the author his muclucs, made from the hide of a mammoth. The tale he tells about how he killed the beast is much taller than the St. Elias bear. (No, beaver’s dream!) Nimrod had a female dog named Klooch that he bred from the malamute and wolf. Her seven pups were the start of a new breed, but disaster strikes. The mammoth, coming out of nowhere, kills the dogs and destroys the man’s rifle. Armed with a hand ax and a pack full of ammo, he figures out how he will kill the mammoth.
The creature lives in a pocket valley, where the warm, wet atmosphere supplies thick green foliage for it to eat. (One of the author’s complaints answered.) Using the gun powder from the shells, he knocks over a hanging rock to lock the animal into its green home. Trapped, the man leads the raging beast on a long race that slowly wears the mammoth down. Once he gets trapped in a cave but outwits his besieger. Eventually, the mammoth falls down in fatigue and Nimrod kills it with the ax. He spends the winter in the valley, feasting on mammoth.
The story ends with Nimrod trading the author his muclucs for the rest of his tobacco. And if you don’t believe him, you can go to the Smithsonian and see Professor Dolvidson. The archaeologist will show you the boots that are made of authentic mammoth skin.
London has fun with the tall tale format in “A Relic of the Pleistocene” that must have been popular up in the Klondike. The idea of hunting the last mammoth will be borrowed by future authors such as Kenneth Gilbert, Manly Wade Wellman and Irving J. Crump. Even Captain Marvel Jr. faced off against one once in the comics.
NB: Just a side note on the illustration from Collier’s. The artist is Arthur Heming (1870-1940), a Canadian icon (and like most Canadian icons who aren’t hockey players, nobody remembers him). He is one of the greatest of the Northern illustrators along with Charles Livingston Bull. Heming did the animal illustrations for Mooswa & Others of the Boundaries (1900) By William Alexander Fraser. Collier’s, obviously, knew of his talents.