What did John Muir mean when he said I had been fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive and more difficult to force one's way through.

Muir describes his traitorous journey he had to embark through the swamp and narrate how the trip was dangerous and uneasy. He uses words such as difficult, struggling, fear, extensive, crooked, brood heaps, faint, hungry and tangled to depicts the severity of the event. Muir uses diction with a negative connotation to elicit the fear and concern that he felt when he became worried whether or not he'd be able to make it out of the swamp before night.