The most valuable and the most numerous sources of information in English about Peru exist in the writings of those who travelled in the New World. Esteemed not only in their own right as first-hand records of visits to distant and exotic lands, they came to be prized by authors and compilers of works of history, geography and cartography, even of drama, and in the eighteenth century by the creators of the genre of fictional travel.

The earliest text in English to offer a complete view of America, north and south, was the translation of André Thevet's Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557). As cosmographer to the French crown, he had accompanied the expedition of Durand de Villegagnon to a settlement near Rio de Janeiro in 1555. Based on a blend of observation and conjecture, it was particularly enlightening and exciting for its new English readers in respect of Brazil, with reports on the customs of its native population, including Amazons and cannibals. However, its author also drew attention to the various routes of access to Peru: by sea from the south through the Straits of Magellan, from Darien and the Isthmus of Panama in the north, and overland into the interior from the River Plate. The first of these routes, describing the coast to Cape Vírgenes at the mouth of the Straits, gave wider currency to the legend of Patagonian giants up to twelve feet tall. The River Plate likewise was fancifully recorded as the site of encounters between Spaniards and Indians who were both giants and eaters of human flesh. Ever since Columbus, with a touch of regret, had commented that he had not yet found monsters during his first voyage, although he had received news of man-eaters, age-old European beliefs that amongst heathens there inhabited giants, warrior women, anthropophagi and wild men, were dragged along to take root with each advancing stage of Spanish exploration and conquest. There is no reason that Peru should be different, especially in its frontier or less well-known remoter zones.