KUYP VAN KAARTEN, 



OR THE GNOME VALLEY. 



" What are these, 



So wither'd, and so wild in their attire ; 

 That look not like the inhabitants of the earth, 

 And yet are on 't ? Live you ? or are you anght 

 That man may question ? 



Were such things here, as we do speak about ; 

 Or have we eaten of the insane root, 

 That takes the reason prisoner ?" 



SHAKSPEARE. 



THE South American traveller may possibly remember that there 

 are a number of secluded, yet ancient villages, whose population, 

 thin as it is, is a medley of Portuguese, Mulattoes, New Yorkists, 

 Virginians, and a few individuals whose parents were people of 

 England, situated on the north-western boundaries of Brazil, with 

 whom communication is uncertain and unfrequent, and whose man- 

 ners and mode of living, owing to their removal from the influence of 

 modern improvement, are almost as simple as the patriarchal ages. 

 One of these, named Rio-del-Nema, is the scene of the following 

 narrative. 



The inhabitants of this village were a nondescript kind of people, 

 somewhat superstitious, but friendly in their intercourse with one 

 another, and hospitable to the very few strangers that wandered in 

 their direction. Half cultivators, half huntsmen, they wanted spirit 

 and perseverance to become, or profit as either; a few plots of 

 maize, and the raising a few vegetables that did not demand much 

 experience, supplied them with the principal means of subsistence: 

 inconstant by temperament, the spade was often relinquished for the 

 rifle, and the reaping-hook for a gin. From the surpassing grandeur 

 of the scenery around them, one might have expected to meet an 

 admiration of the beauties of nature, an elevated tone of thinking 

 and feeling, or at least a not total indifference to the refinement of 

 mind. But this was not the case; they seemed perfectly insensible 

 to the hundred natural beauties, to which they could not avoid being 

 daily witness ; and plodded on with an apathetic equanimity, not 

 certainly very enviable. 



Among the inhabitants of the Kio-del-Nema, of best substance, 

 about the middle of the past century, might be reckoned a wight, 

 termed Kuyp Van Kaarten. His grandfather had, for some political 

 reasons, migrated from New York somewhere about the year 1679 ; 

 and, after roving through the coast towns of the Brazils, had wandered 

 westwards, and at last had settled down at Rio. Sprung from an 

 ancient Dutch family, he inherited the thrift and industry peculiar to 

 the nation, and, in course of years, accumulated a tolerable property; 

 not indeed in coin, but in grain, cattle, &c. This descended to his 



