Hearne also informs us that swans, geese, brants, ducks, and other wild water-fowl, are so numerous about Hudson's Bay, in the spring and summer, that the company every season salt up vast quantities of them, sometimes sixty or seventy hogs-heads.[8] He enumerates ten different species of geese, several of which, (particularly the snow geese, the blue geese, brent geese, and horned wavey,) lay their eggs and raise their young in some country unknown, even to the Indians;[9] as their eggs and young are never seen by them, neither have the most accurate observers been able to discover where they make their winter residence; as it is well known that they do not migrate to the southward; but few of them ever pass to the south, and some of the species are said never to have been seen south of latitude fifty-nine degrees.[10] Most of those fowls molt or shed their feathers in a peculiar manner, in summer, and become nearly naked. Hence it would seem that they must breed in winter while absent, for it is impossible that they could lay and sit whilst molting; whereas, the migratory geese and ducks of this country are not known to shed their feathers, in any great degree; and are well known to raise their young in the summer, whilst in the north. It may, therefore, be inferred, that many of those water-fowls, which Hearne describes, raise their young beyond the icy circle and within the sphere. As many of the ten species of geese he saw there, are unknown further south, it establishes the fact, that they do not come to the south to winter. In the papers of the Honourable D. Barrington, and Colonel Beaufoy, on the possibility of approaching the north pole, read before the Royal Society of London, there is an extensive collection of instances cited, where navigators have reached high northern latitudes; from which it appears to be well authenticated, that navigators have in numerous instances reached the latitude of eighty-two, eighty-three, and eighty-four degrees:[11] and some are said to have sailed as far north as eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees.[12] It is almost uniformly stated, that in those high latitudes, the sea is clear of ice, or nearly so, and the weather moderate.[13] To cite the various instances in which navigators have sailed far north, would be too tedious:[14] the whole book principally consists of a series of facts, which have a strong bearing on the subject, and to which I would refer the reader who feels disposed to investigate. The whole appears to strengthen the opinion, that there is a barrier, or circle of ice, about where the whalers go to fish; but, when that is passed, we come to an open sea, and a more temperate region.