Asia for the Elucidation of the Abbe Gaultier’s Geographical Games. by Jehoshaphat Aspin 1822.

Scarce map of Asia by Jehoshaphat Aspin.

From, Aspin’s, A Complete Course of Geography, by Means of Instructive Games invented by the Abbé Gaultier included ‘numerous emendations and additions, and an entire new set of maps, including the recent discoveries in the Arctic Regions’. Abbé Gaultier, an educationalist originally from Piedmont, had settled in France in 1780 and later fled the revolution to London. He died in 1818 but his Geography continued to be reprinted. In 1815 it was ‘collated with the author’s last Paris edition by Jehoshaphat Aspin’, a cartographer. In the new edition of 1827 the death of Cook is acknowledged in the answer to the question — ‘What have you to observe respecting the Sandwich Isles? ‘The prompt, somewhat pompous reply, which is rewarded with one token, proclaims — ‘The Sandwich Isles, eleven in number, were discovered in 1777, by Captain Cooke, who was killed by the natives in 1779, at Hawaii, misspelt Owyhee, the principal of them’. The ‘game’ comprises detailed questions and answers about geography and lists rewards for the correct responses. It also presents coloured maps with all details given and another set of maps with only the outlines. Counters, each marked with a geographic name, are used to show places on the unmarked map. Juliana Bayfield,  ‘Games of Virtue and Learning’, The La Trobe Journal, 1997