There he met manifest destiny evangelists William McKendree Gwin and Robert J Walker who fervently believed that America should dominate the North American continent.
In 1847, the appointed Governor, Nikolai Muraviev, was determined to expand Russian trade and fixed on the Amur River, its boundary with China, as the key geostrategic location.
He later wrote "I had already fixed in my own mind upon the river Amoor as the destined channel by which American commercial enterprise was to penetrate the obscure depths of Northern Asia, and open a new world to trade and civilization."
With the help of Gwin and Russian Ambassador Edward de Stoekl, he received an audience with President Franklin Pierce in 1856 and impressed.
After Irkutsk, he met up with Muraviev again and headed to the southern border town of Kyakhta where many drunken evenings ensued.
He crossed over the border to the Chinese frontier town of Maimattschin and related in great detail the Mongol New Year celebration of the Feast of the Lanterns.
Arriving back in America, he decided on a Pacific network of railroads and steamships as being the means to make his fortune and develop western trade.
In 1859, he approached Hiram Sibley, head of the Western Union Telegraph Company and promoter of an intercontinental line across the United States.
As California senator Milton Latham suggested in 1861, through the line "we hold the ball of the earth in our hand, and wind upon it a network of living and thinking wire till the whole is held together and bound with the same wishes, projects and interests."
Making a reasonable though not entirely perfect deal, he returned to Washington, reissued his book on his Russian journey down the Amur and was now able to take a back seat.
Sibley recommended to the Western Union board that they buy all of Collins' rights and set up a subsidiary company.