204 



Alfred Charles Smith — In Memoriam. 



be remembered as one who never failed to be courteous — who 

 never lost his temper — whom ill-health apparently never made 

 irritable — whose stores of information were always at other people's 

 service — who was as little selfish or opinionated as it is in human 

 nature to be — who was delightful as a companion — and whose 

 friendship was a privilege. The County of Wilts owed much to 

 him in life, and in death he will be remembered as not the least of 

 her Worthies. 



Obituary notices of him appeared in The Devizes Gazette, Dec. 15th, 1898 ; 



The Trowbridge Chronicle, and The Salisbury Diocesan Gazette, January, 1899. 



% iibliopapjjkal fist of §ooh f %xtxxks f 



The Attractions oi the Nile and its Banks. A 

 Journal of Travels in Egypt and Nubia, showing 

 their attractions to the Archaeologist, the 



Naturalist, and General Tourist. Two vols. London : 



John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1868. Cloth. Post 8vo. Vol. I., pp. xxiv., 

 282, with three illustrations ; Vol. II., pp. xiv., 295, with three illustrations. 



In these volumes — the pleasantest, perhaps, of all his books of travel — the 

 author gives an account of a four months' tour in company with his father 

 and a friend in the spring of 1865, in Egypt and Nubia, three months being 

 spent in a journey up the Nile as far as Wady Haifa in a " Dahabeah." In 

 the preface he sets forth his object in writing, as being not so much to describe 

 the antiquities and the monuments which have been fully dealt with in many 

 books, but rather the impressions the author received from them, the incidents 

 of the daily life of the traveller in Egypt, the customs of the country, and 

 other matters which cannot be gleaned from guide books. He gives, for 

 instance, an interesting chapter on the Old Coptic Churches of Cairo, describing 

 an interview which he had with their patriarch, and defending the Copts as a 

 body from the contumely poured on them in many books of Egyptian travel 

 published previously. He also discourses on the methods employed by the 

 Egyptians in moving the obelisks and gigantic statues, with reference to the 

 similar methods probably employed in Britain to move and erect the stones 

 of Avebury and Stonehenge. But the most permanently valuable portion of 

 the book is the chapter at the end of the second volume in which he deals at 

 length with all the species of birds met with during the tour. Indeed, as he 

 tells us, he never lost an opportunity of observing and collecting birds at 

 every possible point of the journey, and the real interest of the tour was for 

 him evidently more ornithological than archaeological, 



