"Only one main road leads to the lake, that from the small town of Pettigo, four miles distant. This road ends at the ferry, where there is a house and a few other buildings..."
"[Lough Derg] is one of the loneliest places on earth. Its boulder-strewn shores, thirteen miles in circumference, seem to have retained all their original wildness..."
A description of the lake taken from O'Connor's account of an 1836 story in the Dublin Penny Journal Count Raymond de Perilleaux's 1397 journey to the Purgatory
"…Fin M’Coul stood before the monster; but instead of innocently submitting to be sucked in like a common man, Fin, famed as he was above all the Fions for feats of agility, took a hop, step, and leap, and fairly and clearly jumped down its…
