_A Voyage down the Amoor; with a Land Journey through Siberia, and Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan._ By PERRY McDONOUGH COLLINS, United States Commercial Agent at the Amoor River, New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860. pp. 390.
This is a very amusing book. The introductory part of it, in which the author recounts his adventures in Siberia before setting out on his expedition down the Amoor, is full of bad taste, bad rhetoric, and bad grammar. If we had read no farther, we should have thought that a more unfit personage than this gentleman with the monumental name could not have been chosen for any public service.
Mr. Perry McDonough Collins gives us the bill of fare of gentlemen's tables at which he dined, tells us how much and what kinds of wine were "drank," and sometimes winds up his account of the feast with a compliment to the "amiable and interesting" family of his host. Mr. Egouminoff's dinner, he tells us, "was excellent, with several kinds of wine, closing with Champagne. We had _also_ the pleasure of the company of Mrs. E. and her daughter, and several other guests, besides a handsome widow." There is something charmingly _naïf_ in thus throwing in the company as a _succedaneum_ to the dinner, and carefully segregating the widow from the rest of mankind as a distinct species.
Mr. Collins also reports for us carefully the orations he made on various festive occasions,--a piece of very proper economy, since they were delivered in English to an audience of Russians. He confesses that it is not the custom to make after-dinner-speeches in Siberia, which proves that the Russian Government has neglected at least one opportunity of adding to the terrors of a Penal Colony. At one dinner he had the satisfaction of making three of these terrible mistakes. He responds to the health of General Mouravieff, Governor of the Province, to that of President Buchanan, and to that of "our guests." We should like to have been present at this display, provided we could have been speech-proofed, like the Russians in their ignorance of English. It was certainly a proud day for America, and the bird of our country will be glad that the eloquence has been carefully saved by Mr, Collins for the good of his compatriots.