All South America was now under the same monarch; boundary questions between Portuguese and Spanish America apparently ceased to have any importance. The enormous extension of Brazil toward the interior over territory formerly conceded to be Spanish occurred during the sixty years of Spanish domination. The Spanish monarch did not have time to spend on Brazilian matters, and the colonists were less interfered with from Lisbon and Madrid than might have been expected. Portuguese historians have much exaggerated the evil effects of the English, Dutch, and French half filibustering, half-trading descents on the coast, which occurred during this period. The pillage of a few towns was more than compensated by the commerce that sprang up; much Brazilian sugar escaped paying the heavy export duties; settlement extended rapidly over new territory, and the importation of negroes continued. As early as 1575 a settlement had been made in Sergipe, but the great expansion over northern Brazil began under the rule of Philip's first governor-general. In 1583 he sent troops to take possession of the important port of Parahyba, where some French traders had obtained a foothold that prevented the inhabitants of Pernambuco from spreading north beyond Itamarica. The Spanish mercenaries were at first successful, but they could not stifle the serious Indian war which broke out. The Pernambucanos had better success, because they knew how to take advantage of the dissensions among the savages. Fortifying a town at Parahyba, they permanently established their sugar plantations in its neighbourhood, and then these indefatigable and land-hungry Creoles pushed on farther to the north. In 1597 Jeronymo de Albuquerque, the greatest of Brazilian colonial generals, attacked and defeated the powerful Pitagoares Indians, and established the colony of Natal, the nucleus of the present state of Rio Grande do Norte. This brought the Pernambucanos to Cape St. Roque. To the south they had spread as far as the San Francisco River, there meeting the Bahianos who, by 1589, had taken possession of the present state of Sergipe.