Geographic: The Amalickiahites had to pass from the north to the south. In doing so they had to pass through Nephite controlled territory. The path they didn’t take, for obvious reasons, was directly upriver through Zarahemla. Since Moroni attempts to cut them off in the wilderness, clearly the Amalickiahites are using the wilderness area as the means of bypassing more settled locations.
There are two wilderness areas described for Nephite lands, one to the west and one to the east of Zarahemla. We do not know which of the two is meant in this verse.
Variant: The 1981 printing restored a phrase that had been lost in intervening editions. Until the 1981 printing, the phrase “with his tents” had been missing from printed texts, even though the phrase was present in the original manuscript.