In the neighborhood of Oporto, country women may be met conveying little babies to the Foundling Hospital, four or five together, in a basket. These helpless creatures are the illegitimate children of peasant girls, openly deserted in the villages, and thus forwarded by the authorities to the care of those pious strangers who undertake their nurture and preservation.[246] In these cases, says Mr. Kingston, the females are not treated by their parents with any harshness or rigor. They are rather compassionated for their misfortune, and are only sent away from home when found obstinately persistent in a course of evil. As may be supposed, the foundling hospitals have abundant claims on their funds. The Real Casapia, at Belem, near Lisbon, and another hospital in Lisbon attached to the Casa de Misericordia, receive together nearly three thousand children, who are brought up to different callings, and otherwise prepared for active life, as is usual in such institutions. There is a similar asylum, equally frequented, in Oporto. In this city there is also an asylum in which husbands may place their wives during their own absence from home. It often happens that ladies, on such occasions, enter the asylum of their own accord. There is also in Oporto an establishment in the nature of a Penitentiary, in which husbands may immure their faithless wives, or even those who give grounds of suspicion. It is presumed that in the nineteenth century, even in Portugal, this must be done under color of some legal authority. CHAPTER XIV. ALGERIA. Prostitution in Algiers before the Conquest.--Mezonar.--Unnatural Vices.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Decree of 1837.--Corruption.--Number of Prostitutes and Population.--Nationality of Prostitutes.--Causes of Prostitution.--Brothels.--Clandestine Prostitution.--Baths.-- Dispensary.--Syphilis.--Punishment of Prostitutes. A pamphlet has lately appeared in France on the subject of Prostitution in Algiers. Its author, Dr. E. A. Duchesne, has rendered service by collecting a large number of important facts and statistical data.[247]