Within fifteen minutes the boys had the long table in front of them literally covered with geographies, atlases, loose maps, and encyclopaedias.  Paul even brought up a globe as large as a pumpkin, while Bob was not content until he had secured a score of back numbers of travel magazines.  Into this divers collection of diagrams and reading matter they dove with an avidity which would have surprised the teachers they had when they were in grammar school, if they could have seen them.  It soon became evident that they would not only need a route and schedule to make their journey successful, but also an enormous amount of general information about the countries they would pass over.