Among the various sources of information about the Africa of the Slave Trade era, one of the more voluminous and detailed is the great series of English Customs records held at the Public Record Office in London under CUST 3 and CUST 17. Each year's records are contained in a gigantic ledger. Those up to 1780, in the CUST 3 series, are organized entirely under countries, of which the whole of Africa counts as one (though each West Indian island is separately listed, and most of the North American colonies, though New England is mercifully counted as a single unit, as is “Virginia and Maryland”). In the CUST 17 series, which overlaps with the CUST 3 series from 1772 and runs until 1808, the arrangement is somewhat different, and a second series of entries is arranged under commodities. From 1796, the Cape (newly occupied) is shown separately; Sierra Leone appears in 1798, and Morocco in 1807/08. A fire destroyed all the records for 1813, and export records for the previous years, as well as an unknown number of more detailed records for earlier years, and also the records of the East India trade, and of Prize goods, and odd other parts of the records for the years before the fire. So far as Africa is concerned, it is possible to construct continuous series for Imports into England, and for re-exports, with only 1813 missing, but the export records for 1809-11 inclusive are lost. The list of countries recognized continues to vary after 1809, and from 1827 to 1845 the records divide up the coast of Africa into stretches, of which only “Gold Coast and Cape Coast” bears any relation to later divisions.