"[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
"Of woods, nurseries or plantations [Templecarn] is at present completely destitute, thought there is every appearance of it having been formerly well supplied with timber..."