Beneath the peninsula of Lower Michigan there are brines and sheets of mineral water lying in basin form, and very rich in salt, bromides, etc., and of great medical and commercial value. They have been reached by numerous wells which run down to about 3,000 feet near the center of the basin, as at Alma and Bay City. The water comes up from the bottom of these wells hot (over 90 degrees), showing a decidedly more rapid increase in temperature than in the copper mines. But the famous Comstock lode, where fabulous wealth lured the miners on, showed perhaps the most rapid increase in temperature that man has ever dared to face. It was, however, doubtless due to the action of hot waters rising from still greater depths–probably the same waters that deposited the silver ores, still at work. In the mines of this region the miners, naked as savages, reeking with perspiration, drinking pailful after pailful of ice water (twenty tons of ice, or, in another case, ninety-five pounds per man, were used each day), could labor but ten minutes at the drift (in imminent danger of being scalded by striking a stream of hot water) before being overcome by heat and reeling to a cooler place. Fainting, delirium, even death have been the effect of the reaction on coming to the surface. Verily the Cuban proverb, that a Yankee would be found to go after a sack of coffee though it were at the gates of hell, was not far from the literal truth.
However, the rate of increase of temperature may vary, all indications thus agree that less than ten miles below us a red heat is attained and within twenty a white heat. Think of it! Ten miles below us it is red hot. Ten miles above we have the pitiless cold, far below zero, of interplanetary space. To what a narrow zone of delicately balanced temperature is life confined!
go after a sack of coffee though it were at the gates of hell
I feel that way some mornings.