17　Next-door Neighbors

There is a saying that“Good fences make good neighbors，”but that depends on the neighbors. North of the United States is a country bigger than the United States called Canada.It stretches across America from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and there would have to be a fence 3，000 miles long if there were a fence, but there is none—nothing but an imaginary line.An imaginary line is a line on the map but not on the ground.On this imaginary line the two countries set up a stone on which they said something like this，“Canada and the United States agree never to fight”；that's all—a gentlemen's agreement.It is called the“Peace Stone.”

Boys often say“findings is keepings.”The French people found Canada, but England thought she had a better right to it, so she fought for it and took it away from the French. That was a long time ago, but there are a great many French still in Canada, and in the city of Quebec more people speak French than English.

I once had a Newfoundland dog. He was woolly and big and ate as much as a man.Newfoundland dogs came from an island on the Atlantic side of Canada which an Englishman found, and so he called it New-found-land.Newfoundland is now a part of Canada.

Just off the coast of Newfoundland is a shallow part of the sea called the Grand Banks.