The matter was simple enough when you came to look at it with philosophy.
The Martians had sent their dead down here for many thousand years and
as they came they were frozen in, the bands and zones in which they
sat indicating perhaps alternating seasons. Then after Nature had been
storing them like that for long ages some upheaval happened, and this
cleft and lake opened through the heart of the preserve. Probably the
river once ran far up there where the starlight was crowning the blue
cliffs with a silver diadem of light, only when this hollow opened did
it slowly deepen a lower course, spreading out in a lake, and eventually
tumbling down those icy steps lose itself in the dark roots of the hills.
It was very simple, no doubt, but incredibly weird and wonderful to me who
stood, the sole living thing in that immense concourse of dead humanity.

Look where I would it was the same everywhere. Those endless rows
of frozen bodies lying, sitting, or standing stared at me from every
niche and cornice. It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round,
as though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there
amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the dull
low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed to and
soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a rustle, not
a whisper broke the eternal calm of that great caravansary of the dead.

The very rattle of the shingle under my feet and the jingle of my
navy scabbard seemed offensive in the perfect hush, and, too awed
to be frightened, I presently turned away from the dreadful shine of
those cliffs and felt my way along the base of the wall on my own side.
There was no means of escape that way, and presently the shingle beach
itself gave out as stated, where the cliff wall rose straight from the
surface of the lake, so I turned back, and finding a grotto in the ice
determined to make myself as comfortable as might be until daylight came.