The French-Alsatian geographer Charles Huber (1847–84) achieved fame as one of the 19th century’s great Arabian explorers. On his two heroic journeys between 1880 and 1884, he pioneered the scientific mapping of inland Arabia and made some of the earliest records of ancient North Arabian inscriptions and rock art. His tragic murder in 1884 meant that he published little, and the only connected narrative that he managed to write was of his first journey in 1880–81. This highly significant document of Arabian exploration has not been published since 1885, and is presented here for the first time in English translation.