The ugly terrain of Lough Derg

The ugly terrain of Lough Derg

Lough Derg--Vicinity--Purgatory--Travel guide

An account of the religious history of Lough Derg for the traveller.

J. B. Doyle

Tours in Ulster: A hand-book to the antiquities and scenery of the north of Ireland.
By J. B. Doyle. With numerous illustrations, chiefly from the author's sketch-book, p. 361

Hodges and Smith, Dublin

1854

Digitised by Google, sponsored by New York Public Library, archived on Hathi Trust digital library

Public domain

Handbook

English

Travel guide

DD_0480

54.616218, -7.876212

"Lough Derg is four miles from Pettigo ; for the first three miles there is a good high road, which runs for a considerable distance alongside a considerable stream, called the Tarmon Water; the last mile is through a wild mountain moor to the left. It will be necessary to take a guide and a pony from Pettigo, both of which can always be obtained at the little hotel. Part of this path runs along the steep acclivities of the rocky hills that rise from the moor, and in some instances it is no small trial to the nerves to keep your seat ; but it is best to allow the pony to take its own way, and to resign yourself to your fate the smallest interference on your part might precipitate the horse and his rider into the morass below.
A more wild and desolate scene cannot be imagined than that which presents itself upon gaining the high grounds near the lake. The expanse of water, although more than ten miles in circumference, has nothing pleasing in it embosomed in a waste of red swampy bogs, its shores are not enlivened by cultivation or beautified by the presence of a single tree. Its peat-stained, sluggish waters are broken here and there by a few unsightly islands, upon which nothing grows above the rank of the stunted juniper. At the far side, long ranges of low, un- interesting mountains, with the same brown swampy covering, dip down upon its shores, without grandeur ; it looks a very Stygian waste a dull and melancholy wilderness.
Such is the scene to which ‘the weary and heavy laden’ have come for ages to find rest for their souls, and such the place to which superstition leads her votaries from the broad daylight of the busy world, and the haunts of civilized man."

396 p. illus. 17 cm.