difficulty vs smooth sailing

difficulty

noun
  • Physical danger from the environment, especially with risk of drowning 

  • An obstacle that hinders achievement of a goal. 

  • The state of being difficult, or hard to do. 

  • An objection. 

  • An awkward situation or quarrel. 

  • That which cannot be easily understood or believed. 

smooth sailing

noun
  • Used to describe an activity that is not encountering any problems. 

How often have the words difficulty and smooth sailing occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )