Print of steel engraving titled „Combat de Coqs“.

Author unknown.

Engraved by unknown.

From the „Oceanie ou cinquieme partie du monde. Revue geographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micronesie, de la Polynesie et de la Melanesie“. Firmin Didot Freres, Paris. 1836.

A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters (cocks), or more accurately gamecocks, held in a ring called a cockpit. The first documented use of the word gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a “game”, a sport, pastime or entertainment, was recorded in 1646, after the term “cock of the game” used by George Wilson, in the earliest known book on the sport of cockfighting in The Commendation of Cocks and Cock Fighting in 1607. But it was during Magellan's voyage of discovery of the Philippines in 1521 when modern cockfighting was first witnessed and documented by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, in the kingdom of Taytay.

Approx. image size 14, 2 x 9, 1/20, 4 x 12, 3 cm.

Condition: good.