CHAPTER XX. 
SEAL-HUNTING-SIR JOHN FRANKLIN—RESOURCES—ACCLIMATIZA- 
TI0 N-THE HOPE—DR. HAYES’S RETURN—HIS JOURNEY—SNOW- 
BLINDNESS-CAPE IIAYES-THE DOGS TANGLED—MENDING THE 
HARNESS-CAPES LEIDY AND FRAZER—DOBBIN BAY—FLETCHER 
WEBSTER HEADLAND-PETER FORCE BAY—NEW PARTIES—TIIF.IR 
ORDERS-PROGRESS OF SEASON-THE SEAL — THE NETSIK AND 
USUlt- A BEAR—OUR ENCOUNTER—CHANGE IN THE FLOE. 
“May 30, Tuesday.—Me are gleaning fresh water 
from the rocks, and the icebergs begin to show com¬ 
mencing streamlets. The great floe is no longer a 
Sahara, if still a desert. The floes are wet, and their 
snows dissolve readily under the warmth of the foot, 
and the old floe begins to shed fresh water into its 
hollows. Puddles of salt water collect around the 
ice-foot. It is now hardly recognizable,—rounded, 
sunken, broken up with water-pools overflowing its 
base. Its diminished crusts are so percolated by the 
saline tides, that neither tables nor broken fragments 
unite any longer by freezing. It is lessening so rapidly 
that we do not fear it any longer as an enemy to 
