12 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
Some weeks after we left the S.S. ‘Bele’ at 
Egedesminde—news travels slowly in a country 
with no regular postal service and no telegrams— 
we heard that the ship had struck the rocks of a 
small island in foggy weather a few miles south 
of her destination, the most northerly Danish 
Settlement of Upernivik (Map 4, U, lat. 73° N.). 
Fortunately the ‘Bele,’ unlike the regular Danish 
steamers, possessed a wireless installation and was 
able to communicate with the King’s ship rather 
more than 200 miles further south, which speedily 
went to her assistance and took back to Denmark 
some of the passengers and crew who had mean- 
while made themselves as comfortable as they 
could in improvised tents on the inhospitable 
rocky coast. The wreck of the ‘Bele’ may, it is 
hoped, lead to the establishment in the near future 
of some wireless stations on the Greenland coast 
and on the Government ships. ‘The statement that 
there is no regular postal service, though true in 
the ordinary sense, needs some modification. There 
is a recognised scale of payment for natives who 
convey messages or carry mails to Settlements 
within reasonable distance of the ports of call of 
steamers from Copenhagen. Upernivik is usually 
spoken of as the most northerly Danish Settlement 
in Greenland, but there is a trading station be- 
tween lat. 76° N. and 77°N., established in 1910 
under the name Thule, by the well-known Danish 
explorer, Knud Rasmussen, chiefly with a view 
to benefit the natives of the far north which are 
the finest representatives of the Eskimo race in 
