Omega by Camille Flammarion — Read

The last habitable regions of the globe were two wide valleys near the equator, the basins of dried up seas; valleys of slight depth, for the general level was almost absolutely uniform. No mountain peaks, ravines or wild gorges, not a single wooded valley or precipice was to be seen; the world was one vast plain, from which rivers and seas had gradually disappeared. But as the action of meteorological agents, rainfall and streams, had diminished in intensity with the loss of water, the last hollows of the sea bottom had not been entirely filled up, and shallow valleys remained, vestiges of the former structure of the globe. In these a little ice and moisture were left, but the circulation of water in the atmosphere had ceased, and the rivers flowed in subterranean channels as in invisible veins.

As the atmosphere contained no aqueous vapor, the sky was always cloudless, and there was neither rain nor snow. The sun, less dazzling and less hot than formerly, shone with the yellowish splendor of a topaz. The color of the sky was sea-green rather than blue. The volume of the atmosphere had diminished considerably. Its oxygen and nitrogen had become in part fixed in metallic combinations, as oxides and nitrides, and its carbonic acid had slowly increased, as vegetation, deprived of water, became more and more rare and absorbed an ever decreasing amount of this gas. But the mass of the Earth, owing to the constant fall of meteorites, bolides and uranolites, had increased with time; so that the atmosphere, though considerably less in volume, had retained its density and exerted nearly the same pressure.