A Negro Explorer at the North Pole

Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary originally hired Matthew Henson to be his valet, but Henson's intelligence and ability distinguished him and he became an invaluable addition to Peary's expeditions to the North Pole. Unlike Peary, Henson learned the Inuit language and trained himself to be an expert dog-sled driver. On the 1909 expedition when Peary claimed to have reached the Pole, it was Henson who drove the sled in which Peary, crippled and frostbitten, was a passenger. In this book, Henson tells of his years as a sailor and his subsequent meeting of Peary, which led to decades of dangerous journeys to the Arctic Sea and the shifting ice of the Pole. A close friend of many Inuit, Henson carefully records their culture and methods of survival, and gives accounts of the times that they saved his life.