"[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..."
"The stone circles [of the Penitential Beds] are small. When this sanctuary was demolished in the seventeenth century the despoilers left only the rude foundation stones protruding from the soil..."
"Lough Derg is dotted with forty-six small islands, some of them graced with shrubs and occasional rowans or ash, but the greater number are only bare rocks projecting out of the water..."
“The island called St. Patrick's Purgatory is altogether rocky, and rather level : without the compass of the island, in the water towards the north east, about two yards from the shore stand certain rocks..."
