Unfortunately,
Chat Belmont is a very badly built house. It stands not upon firm solid natural ground, but upon an artificially heaped bank of large boulders covered with a superficial layer of made earth. The structure has to make matters worse, without proper foundations such as are required by our statutes, and it is riddled in every direction with cracks and "settlements" which as they appeared have been plastered over and concreted by wash cement from time to time.
The made earth upon which the house stands became easily melted and washed down into the great hollows and cavities existing between the boulders below, and before the great storm was over, cracks had begun to appear from the sinking of the foundations which were only 4 or 5 inches deep instead of being 4 or 5 feet or more, as they should have been to impart any stability to the walls.
Instead of at once examining his premises and endeavouring to ascertain the source of the mischief,
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