Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1899-07-16
THE LAST MORTAL.
Speculation as to the Fate Tint VIII Finally 0Vertnl>e the Last
 Man on Earth.

Astronomers tell LIS that the day must come when the earth will, like the moon, wheel through the heavens a dead and barren ball of matter-air- less, waterIess, lifeless. But long, long before that time man will be extinct, will have disappeared so utterly that not so much as the bleaehed skeleton of a human being will be visible on all the millions of square miles of the surface of this planet.
 Unless by some huge and universal eataelysm the whole race is swept at once into eternity, it is but reasonable to suppose that man, like any other race of animals, will disappear slowly, and that eventually there will be but single human being left-some old, old man, gray-headed and bea ded, and left 10 wander alone in solitude that may be imagined but no described.
 How will he die, this last relic of the teeming millions that once transformed the face of the globe and ruled undis- puted masters of every other living thing? There are many fates that may befall him. He may go mad with the horror of loneliness and himself end his own miserable existence. He may be eaten by the vast reptiles CT giant insects which will then probably infest the solitudes.
 But his fate may be far werder and more dreadful. Scientists say that, as we burn the coal and timber we are still so richly supplied with, we let loose into the atmosphere an ever increasing volume of carbonic acid gas. Much of this is taken up by plants, but not all. 1t must increase and eventually poison the breathable air, filling the valleys and mounting slowly to the hilltops, where the last remains of animal life are striving for existence. The last man will climb higher and higher but eventually the suffoeating invisible flood will reach and drown him.
 Again, it is said that the earth as 1t gets older is cracking like dry mud. These cracks will increase until at last they will let the waters of the ocean and rivers sink into the fiery center of the globe. Then will occur an explosion so terrible as may startIe the inhab- itants of neighboring worlds. The last man in this ease will probably be some Arctic explorer or Eskimo, whom the vast plains of ice around will save from instant death and leave 10 grill q few moments till the ice continents are swallowed by red-hot gases and steam
 Suppose these earth cracks develop more slowly, they may suck away the water without devastating explosion, Then the last mans fate will be the worst describable. He will die of thirst. The scene of his death will probably be the great valley in the bed of the Attan- tic ocean, off the Brazilian coast, half way between Rio Janeiro and the cape, where now six miles of green water lie between the steamers keel and the abyssmal slime beneath. There, hope lessly digging in the eyer-drying mud, he must perish and leave his bones to parch on waterless planet.
 The antarctic polar ice cap has been growing thicker and heavier for un- counted ages. The distance from the south pole to the edge of this ice cap is  1,400 miles. The ice rises steadily from the edge to the center. At that center it cannot be less than 12 miles in thick ness-twice as thick as Mount Everett is high. Suppose it splits. Imagine the gigantic mass of water and ice that will come sweeping up north over the oceans and continents of the earth. Where then, will the last man breathe his final gasp? High up in the snows of some great range he will perish mis- erably of cold and starvation, looking down on a huge shallow sea beneath whose tossing waters will lie the whole of the races of the world
 Or last, and perhaps dreariest fate of all, the human race may outlive other mammals and last until the sun. as some day ii must, grows dull and cold, and vegetation dies from the chilled earth. The miserable remnant of earth's people must then slowly die out after ages of an existence to which that of the Eskimo of to-day is a paradise.- London Answers.