46 THE LAST WOLF IN SCOTLAND 



modifications and improvements, remained the approved 

 mode of ignition in small-arms until Victorian times, 

 when Brown Bess and Joe Manton yielded place to the 

 percussion cap. 



Where and when was the very last wolf killed in 

 Scotland ? The claim has been made on behalf of 

 several districts. Pennant, in his well-known Tour in 

 Scotland (1769), describes how Sir Ewen Cameron of 

 Lochiel slew what has been accounted the last of that 

 dreaded race in 1680; and there remains to this day in 

 possession of the present Lochiel a flint-lock gun about 

 five feet long with which the deed was done, together 

 with a pair of gigantic boots in which the chief is 

 reported to have been standing when he fired the shot. 

 This may well have been the last wolf killed in 

 Lochaber; but it is certain that the breed survived 

 considerably later in some other parts of the Highlands. 



The exact date when the last wolf was killed in 

 Sutherland is uncertain, probably between 1690 and 

 1700; but William Scrope, writing more than eighty 

 years ago, has placed on record the details of the 

 exploit as he received them on the spot. 1 Half-way 

 between the rivers Brora and Helmsdale the mountains 

 facing the North Sea are cleft by Glen Loth, whereof 

 the lower part affords fair pasture; but above the 

 junction of the Sletdale burn, a couple of miles inland, 

 the scenery becomes savage in the extreme. The story 

 runs that the sheep of the crofters having been ravaged 

 after the old manner when wolves were plentiful, an 

 old hunter named Poison, living at Wester Helmsdale, 



1 The Art of Deerstalking, chapter xiii. (1838). 



