[3] In 1813, Hall published, along with Professor John Playfair a description of the granitic intrusions within the sedimentary sandstone structures that he saw in the Platteklip Gorge near the Table Mountain in the Cape of Good Hope.

[4] Hall explored Java in 1813 and, as a part of a diplomatic mission to China under Lord Amherst in 1816 undertook surveys of the west coast of Korea and the outlying Ryukyu Islands.

This resulted in his book Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island in the Japan Sea (1818), which was one of the first descriptions of Korea by a European.

As a captain, he was very critical of the fact that this ship did not have a marine chronometer with which to calculate longitude, and attributed the great loss of life directly to this false economy.

[8] He also contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica and wrote scientific papers on subjects as varied as trade winds, the geology of Table Mountain and a comet he observed in Chile.

In 1834, Hall apparently accepted an invitation from Jane Cranstoun, the Countess of Purgstall, to visit her estates in Styria, which she bequeathed two years later to the eminent historian and Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.

The result was Schloss Hainfeld; or, a Winter in Lower Styria, a Gothic travel account, which may have inspired Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.